Spanish Film

[osprey_archer]

I don’t know if I’ve watched a representative sample of Spanish filmography or if my teacher for Spanish film was just a weirdo, but I’ve noticed some definite motifs in Spanish film.

First, SEX. Lots and lots and lots of exceptionally explicit sex, whether or not the film needs it.

Two, the Spanish Civil War. I realize that this was a traumatizing event for the country, but so was World War II for France, and the French haven’t dedicated their entire film industry to that.

Three, depression. Spanish films just wallow in depression. The Sea Inside is quite possibly the most depressing movie in the universe. It should have a content warning about how watching it is likely to induce suicidal thoughts.

This is a problem. I would like to watch movies to brush up on my Spanish, but the TV is right in the middle of the house and my mother really does not need to walk in on that kind of graphic sex or violence or misery porn.

I have hope, because I have liked a few Spanish films I’ve seen. I like The Orphanage and Talk to Her (the latter rather against my will, because it culminates in extreme ick) and I adore Pan’s Labyrinth.

Pan’s Labyrinth suffers from hokey special effects at times--the Pan character looked silly to me--but it really brought the creepy when it needed to (the hand creature! EEEEEK!). The settings were just gorgeous—I loved the whole fantasy world—and Ofelia is wonderful, as is Mercedes, the housekeeper who is secretly one of the rebels and becomes Ofelia’s surrogate mother (sort of) and is believably kick-ass without being superwoman.

I even love the ending, although normal people seem to think it’s depressing.

As a side note, the director of Pan’s Labyrinth is slated to direct The Hobbit, which seems to be a good choice. He’s a good director and his talents seem well-suited to The Hobbit, which is filled with creepiness and lacks most of the grandeur and epic battle scenes of the Lord of the Rings.



So if anyone knows anything about Spanish film and has suggestions for good movies that won’t traumatize my parents, I would be very grateful. (Or if you just want to rave about Pan’s Labyrinth, I’m up for that too.)

Comments

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I don't have much in the way of reccommendations, but yes, you're ntoicing a real trend. Spanish film post-1975 suddenly saw itself as free from the extreme censorship of the Franco era and realized it could talk about sex, depression, and social themes, and from what I can gather, it's decided these are essential to truth in filmmaking.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

*sighs* Oh, Spain. Come back to the light! Make comedies!

It's been over thirty years since Franco died. Maybe the younger generation of filmmakers will form a backlash against the tyranny of the dour.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I can't recommend any Spanish films to you, but I can say how wonderful Pan's Labyrinth is. I really liked the ending - I would have been so let down if suddenly the plot twisted just to make a conventional happy ending. There was justice, or maybe just honesty, in the ending.

Random fact -the director also made Hellboy - which I love - and the same actor plays Abe in that film as plays the faun in Pan's Labyrinth. It's actually really obvious if you watch how the characters move.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Pan's Labyrinth is so wonderful that I'll even forgive del Toro for The Devil's Backbone, which is everything I don't like about the Spanish film establishment, plus dead babies in jars of rum.

I've heard Hellboy is good (I wish it was in Spanish, because then it could improve my Spanish as well as be great). I should watch it.

[anait.livejournal.com]

I really like Pedro Almodovar's La mala educacion and Volver.

'La mala educacion' is film noir, but Almodovar's films are never just one thing, so it's also the smallest bit autobiographical and about the process of writing/creating. And it has Gael Garcia Bernal doing an Oscar-worthy acting job. <333

'Volver' is a movie for women about women, and it's Almodovar's love-letter to the female family members who raised him. For Penelope Cruz, it's the kind of role you get offered maybe once in a lifetime as an actor, if you're lucky. I loved her in it.

And it's Latin American rather than Spanish, but I adore Walter Salles' 'The Motorcycle Diaries,' based on the memoir of Che Guevara and fleshed out by the stories of his friend and travel companion, Alberto Granado. It mixes high spirits and playfulness with more serious themes, quiet storytelling, beautiful cinematography, lovely music, and wonderful performances from Rodrigo de la Serna and Gael Garcia Bernal (yes, I like him a lot). If you can't pay the plane fare to South America and you love road-tripping or traveling, this movie is the next best way to see the continent.

As for disturbing/explicit content, 'La mala educacion' has both, so you might want to take care who's around if you watch it. 'Volver' has one initial disturbing scene, and then the rest of the movie goes in a completely different direction, mostly sweeping the incident under the carpet and moving on. I'm pretty sure that 'The Motorcycle Diaries' is completely fine for anyone to see.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

<3 <3 <3 Motorcycle Diaries--it's an excellent, excellent film, although the concept of a romanticized road trip movie about Che Guevara is odd, given his later history. He gets let off easy because he got assassinated (and by the CIA, no less!), I think.

Latin American films generally have a wider range than Spanish films (Spanish here being films from Spain, not Spanish-language)--I've also seen a Latin American heist movie.

I've heard that Volver is excellent from a lot of people, and if the disturbing content is only at the beginning I can time it that so no one else sees it. It's when the movie is a free-floating mass of disturbing content that things become difficult.

[anait.livejournal.com]

I'm more fond of 'La mala educacion' than 'Volver' as a film, so I hope you'll get a chance to see it at some point, if not right now. I think you'd like it. But Penelope Cruz's Raimunda in 'Volver' is love.

I also like 'Y tu mama tambien,' a Mexican film by Alfonso Cuaron. It's another young, high-spirited road-trip movie, but it's a much more immature and sexually explicit coming-of-age story than 'The motorcycle diaries.' There's nothing disturbing or depressing about this movie, although there's tons of sex (typical Cuaron?...)-- but it works well for the movie, because it's about teenage boys, and the sex is of the harmless teenage boy variety. Maribel Verdu's character adds a much-needed note of seriousness to the story, and you get to enjoy the adorableness of Diego Luna (the actor cast as Prince Liam!) and Gael Garcia Bernal being young and pretty.

And that is the last one of the Spanish-language movies I like, and it's also, not-at-all-coincidently, the last of the movies I've seen Gael Garcia Bernal in...

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I feel like that's a Cuaron thing, although this impression is based on mistful's parody (http://mistful.livejournal.com/59607.html#cutid3) of the Prisoner of Azkaban movie (which Cuaron directed) rather than actually knowing anything about Cuaron.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

Del Toro, who did Pan's, is doing the new Hellboy movie (and did the first). You can tell, even from the ads. I adore his stuff, and every other Spanish film I've seen so far. I'm on tenterhooks for Peliculas Para No Dormir (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461826/) (Films to Keep you Awake At Night, in the English release); I've seen one of the films in the sequence, which was utterly brilliant, and those who've seen all six don't even rate it as one of the best. I did Spanish for GCSE, and I do love being able to pick up words; I admit, I want to relearn Spanish thoroughly mainly to watch films.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think it would be really, really fun to meet del Toro. He just seems to have such a zany imagination.

Which of the Peliculas did you see? They all seem to be horror films--are they really gory, gross out horror? The one you linked to looks more like psychological horror, which I rather like (and it involves imaginary friends! Imaginary friends are almost as good as doorways to other worlds!), but on Netflix it's a double feature with an axe-wielding zombie dressed as Santa.

I think a movie about an axe-wielding Santa is the kind of thing writers come up with drunk the night before they're supposed to deliver the script. I mean, really?

Learning Spanish well enough to watch films is frustrating--I've studied for years and it's frustrating that I can only half-follow a telenovela. I'm hoping that watching actual movies, which are better quality than telenovelas, will make straining to understand worthwhile.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I saw Blame (I think), which was about an illegal abortion clinic in the 70s. It was definitely psychological, with a touch of meta-humour in it's attitude to false revelations. They were TV movies originally - I don't know what Spanish television is like in terms of censorship, but I can't imagine the budgets ran to very gory anyway. BBC showed all six, but I only caught the one.