These are the premieres that hit the theaters this May 17:
By Salvador Llopart
In one of their most celebrated songs, Polanski and the Ardor asked what you would do in a preemptive attack by the USSR. The preventive attack had to do, in the eighties, with the indiscriminate rain of missiles on our heads and the Day of Judgment. In any case, it could be said that what the Madrid group was really questioning in that political-festive song was knowing what one would do if they were told that the world was ending tomorrow. They answered each other without answering. I don’t know, they said. What would we say?
The Apocalypse, since the atomic bomb, is a recurring question also in cinema. The Road (2009), to speak of some more or less recent titles, made desperation its dominant note. The Spanish Fin (2012), by Jorge Torregrosa, looked for answers in the thriller. For its part, Melancolía (2011), by Von Trier, made melancholy, as it could not be otherwise, its raison d’être. Un sol radiant, the latest contribution to the collective debacle that reaches the big screen, similarly opts for despair when facing the end of the world as we know it.
Organized as a succession of vignettes of daily life, of a bucolic nature, in the middle of idyllic landscapes, Un sol radiant has as protagonists a mother (Nuria Prims), her eldest daughter (Nunu Sales), and little Mila (Laia Artigas , the child protagonist of Estiu 1993). The fascination with Carla Simón’s film is evident in this collective effort, with two main directors and three more in the credits. As in Estiu 1993, the girl Mila/Laia, now on the verge of adolescence, is at the center of everything. It is the innocent look at a world that is falling apart.
The film takes place in what we could define as the final part of the process of accepting a death sentence. You know, those stages of negotiation with reality summarized in the famous five successive stages: denial, anger, attempted commitment, depression and acceptance. To the point that it settles – stagnates, and therein lies its biggest problem – into depression and absolute acceptance. If you can’t do anything, it’s better to do what you’ve always known. The madding crowd is far away; The countdown has started. Tick-tock, tick-tock What would you do…?
Por Philipp Engel
Great “bayonil” display in the late second film by the director of the promising La vida sin Sara Amat (2014): Belén Atienza and J.A. Bayona in production; script by Bernart Vilaplana (The Snow Society), and Belén Rueda in the skin of a rhythmic gymnastics coach as divine as she is perverse, as vampy as she is, in the end, wounded.
The eternal protagonist of The Orphanage (2007) delights in her role as a praying mantis with a Cleopatra wig: she is truly scary and at all times, from when she puts on makeup in front of the mirror (war paints!) to when she is resting. with what looks like a pearl mask. The calculated delivery of the veteran blonde star is the best of an effective psychological thriller that tries to make us tense, very tense, always afraid of discovering what this woman can be capable of, both the actress and her character, who seems custom designed.
The plot meanders with a certain skill between Suspiria and Tár, displaying intelligence by not venturing down fantastic paths that would remind too much of Argento’s haunted dancers, nor by overloading the ink on current issues, that is, the abuse that the coach inflicts on the authentic Ukrainian gymnast Maria Netavrovana, whose talent has not yet been shown in all its splendor.
The secondary ones, in general, don’t look much, and there are Irene Escolar, Manuela Vellés and Brays Efe in a cameo. Although there is no lack of nerve, the staging and photography, certainly elegant and sophisticated, can even seem white label, more designed for platforms than for cinema, like the posh Barcelona in which the action takes place. (if a real one still exists). The final section is also surprisingly bland, as if, with the alibi of humanizing the villain, they had not wanted to take the proposal to its ultimate consequences.
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
The children’s imaginary world was brilliantly exalted by the creators of Pixar in Monsters S.A. or Spike Jonze in Where the Wild Things Are. Krasinski approaches the subject with serious outpourings of sentimentality and sugar and elementary didacticism. If the thing doesn’t completely sink, it is because of the inspired design of the multiple creatures and an acceptable dynamism in some action scenes, such as the one with Tina Turner as the unexpected protagonist.
Por P. Engel
Every year, French cinema gives us, at least, one about teachers and another about doctors. With a doctor father and a professor mother, the didactic Doctor Lilti has specialized in both fields, delivering films as credible as they are sentimental, with exciting touches on his humble and disarming simplicity. The chemistry between Adèle Exarchopoulos and Vincent Lacoste is what gives greater substance to an ensemble film that is as human as it is predictable, perfect for setting up a debate about how to manage discipline in the classroom.
By S. Llopart
Satire, as a genre, needs simplification. Calladita is a social satire of a wealthy bourgeoisie family; that bourgeoisie with a big house on the Costa Brava that, according to the cliché, speaks Catalan in private. We meet them through the eyes of Ana, her Colombian maid, embodied with intensity and nuance by Paula Grimaldo. In the eyes of the gentlemen, Ana is invisible, she does not exist. And yet, up close to her, we discover her strong, determined, a presence that dilutes the cliché with her unwavering gaze.
Por P. Engel
Hitting the broken dishes with first love is a universal fantasy, although that email is one of those that never arrives. Meg Ryan, who dedicates her film to Nora Ephron, and must see in Duchovny something of Tom Hanks, places this unlikely reunion in an airport, that non-place from which she tries to take aesthetic advantage. There are good gags, like the public address system acting as a third character, but they are as if lethargic and the plot, tedious like a boarding gate, is based on genre clichés that would work better the other way around.
By S. Llopart
What could have remained a story, another one, of ambition, greed and human degradation, with money as the only driving force – the story of Locomía, that is -, is transformed into a fun parable, very eighties, of self-improvement, friendship and the fight for individual freedom: the fight to become oneself. The director’s palette, to explain, expands in resources – drawings, split screen – and field of vision. And he also has a magnificent cast of performers to achieve it, highlighting Alberto Ammann among all in one of those roles that mark the career of an actor.
