Colombo is a selfish guy who doesn’t get his foot in the door. His wife has left him, his relationship with his son is almost non-existent and he works, with little enthusiasm, as a night watchman in a parking lot in Valencia. Mario isn’t doing much better. He is sick. His partners are after him because he has made off with funds from the lawyers where he worked and the only woman he really loved vanished after an accident that he caused.
Pau Durà directs Luis Zahera (Mario) and Javier Gutiérrez (Colombo) in Pájaros, a road movie in which two desperate men, two failures, begin a crazy and cathartic trip to Romania where they will discover themselves and find out the meaning of friendship word Pájaros, which was presented in competition today in the official section of the Malaga Festival, is an acting showcase for two performers as established as Zahera and Gutiérrez.
Zahera becomes the stuttering and introverted Mario who goes in search of the woman he should never have let escape. Gutiérrez plays a scoundrel, a cheeky guy who wants to leave behind a life that is getting out of hand. Together, and at first not on very good terms, they get into a car in Valencia heading to the Costa Brava. But Mario does not find what he is looking for in Empordà and his journey will continue through Turin and Slovenia until he reaches Romania.
“I think it is a film that can captivate the viewer with its melancholy, its tenderness, its mix of comedy with the drama of the characters,” said Durà this morning in Malaga during the presentation of the film. The director has explained that he had in mind making a road movie with his sights set on Sideways (2004), the film by his admired Alexander Payne.
“Mario is a person who is touched, who is trying to rewind his life,” said Zahera, winner of the Goya for As bestas, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen. “I’m delighted that they’ve finally given me a role that’s not a murderer,” the actor joked. While Gutiérrez has defined his Colombo as “a loser who is looking for his place in the world and this trip fits him perfectly to try to find solutions.”
