These are the movie premieres that hit the screens as of this September 1:
By Jordi Batlle Caminal
The warm, emotional love story between Alfred Molina and John Lithgow that Ira Sachs told us about ten years ago was titled Love Is Strange, the same as a 1988 film by Carles Balagué. Passages could also have been titled Love Is strange, because that is exactly its theme, tucked into a classic triangular melodrama. Sachs usually extracts optimal compositions from his casts (Lithgow and Molina, for example, were never better) and here he has a trio of aces: Franz Rogowski, the least known but the one who carries the weight of the show on his shoulders; the infallible and versatile Ben Whishaw (who can be a perfect Shakespearean King Richard or the nicest Q. 007 could dream of) and the charming and lately ubiquitous Adèle Exarchopoulos (next week we will see her in two new films, two).
Rogowski is a rather fiery film director, who lives with her husband Whishaw. They love each other and seem happy. Until, one night, Rogowski has a meeting with Exarchopoulos, a school teacher, and after making love to her, he falls madly in love with her. From there begins a very hectic swing of sentimental situations. Rogowski breaks up with Whishaw, who soon finds another boyfriend, and goes to live with Exarchopoulos, whom she impregnates. But then he goes back to Whishaw, who at first accepts him, but later doesn’t. Rogowski’s character is certainly a psychologically complex character, and due to his gestures, his wardrobe and his very human fragility (“I’m confused”, he confesses to Whishaw in a moment of intimacy), very close to the Fassbinder constellation. The fascinating thing about Passages is that Sachs never falls into cliché or platitudes. His al dente staging, with careful dramatic containment of tensions, accentuates realism and brings out the truth of each character. Love is strange, yes, and its conflicts unresolvable. That is why Sachs chooses to conclude Passages with a forward fugue: there is no sea on the horizon, but this rapid fugue also includes, as if Rogowski were the Antoine Doinel of The 400 Blows, a freeze frame that suggests that another film should start there. , that we will never see but we can imagine
By Salvador Llopart
There are harsh time travel stories, like Terminator, and others that are rather friendly and metaphorical, where it is verified what could have happened if this or that or the other. jump! It is one of the latter, in a Galician and youth version. The story of two brothers who lose their mother in a, well, in a wormhole, which is like an open door to space-time. Endearing, funny and nostalgic story at the same time. Although a bit of narrative daring would have suited him better.
Por Philipp Engel
After the success of I am loving you madly, the magnetic Omar Banana, who is increasingly reminiscent of Eduardo Casanova, experiences a heartbreaking family tragedy during a vacation in La Manga del Mar Menor (Murcia). Although not all the performances are at the same level, there are clumsiness in the script and the second act is more arid, it is still a fresh, at times exciting and visually stimulating adolescent drama that can be seen in the films of Xavier Dolan and Luca Guadagnino . What we needed to say goodbye to summer.
By Salvador Llopart
What was born as a drama becomes, in the third installment, a parody. Washington has the quality of an avenging angel and a dead look, one of those who have been through hell and back. That’s still there. The violence has become, however, a blood circus and the plot is an insulting simplification between good guys and bad guys. There is a lot of the early Spaghetti Western, perhaps because it takes place in Italy. And very little of its deep resonance. It is entertaining, things happen, but trivial until saying enough.
Por Philipp Engel
A young woman comes to town to bury her husband, the old woman tells her: “a married woman is a valuable weapon; a single woman is just a bunch of trash”, that’s how brutal is the humor, sometimes more subtle, of these intertwined stories about death, which range from the supernatural to the most mercantile aspects. With visual power and pop irony, the Vietnamese filmmaker challenges traditions embellishing them with an experimental poetics that is the antithesis of classic World Cinema for candid souls.
Por Philipp Engel
Perhaps it is not convenient to remember that Jaime Chávarri immortalized what could well be the most memorable gathering of poets in the history of our cinema –we are talking about the Panero brothers in El desencanto (1976), of course–, because this choral comedy about a festival of poetry –in which all kinds of bards coexist for several days, including an influencer and a ragpicker– could be just the opposite.
The long-awaited return of the veteran filmmaker, eighteen years after that correct Camarón biopic (2005), which earned Óscar Jaenada the Goya, can only be described as disappointing. The most dedicated, a luminous Marta Nieto who leaves her skin, and a Sergi López, in that of an endearing cursed poet, raise only at times a most outdated vaudeville (it does not help that it takes place in a convent, including a funny nun). , in which most of the characters look like caricatures with thick lines, badly drawn: from the frustrated poet (Adrián Lastra) to the open-minded homosexual (Ginés García Millán), through the possessive blind man (Roberto Enríquez), all result from everything. less credible.
The hackneyed adventures to which they indulge, jumping from bed to bed, getting rid of the classic misunderstandings or simply making a fool of themselves, lack hook, and the proposal, no matter how much the viewer captures the winks, does not quite work as a reflection either. or less satirical of the current scene.
In this free adaptation of Fernando Aramburu’s novel Avid Pretensions, one can appreciate the attempt to create humorous contrasts between three generations of poets (and actors), with forced doses of “wrong” humor –drug use, scatology…– , but in the end it is no more than entertaining, which, in the case at hand, is even painful, especially when Celso Burgallo appears as if he were a mummified Leopoldo Panero and Vicky Peña does not stop reminding us of the supreme elegance of Felicidad White. A pity.
