SIFF Cinema will screen eight films in its Festival of New Spanish Cinema (Oct.15-21). Four of them were available for preview.
“Camino” (Sat. Oct. 17 at 2 pm and Wed. Oct. 21 at 9 pm) opens with a death scene unlike any other, as a priest guides a child through the dangers of perdition as she tries to complete her journey to paradise. From the horrifying point of her death, the film returns to the spirited world of the senses, where music, literature, the theatre, and love are embraced with pre-adolescent joy
Although Javier Fesser’s extraordinary film is dedicated to Alexia Gonzalez Barros, who died of Ewing’s sarcoma at the age of eleven and is now being prepared for beatification, he is more interested in the pagan side of her imaginary life than the Christian interpretation put upon it by the religious institution of Opus Dei. As the priest heartlessly proclaims that this girl is taking Jesus very seriously thanks to her illness, we see that the Jesus she is trying to get close to is the boy playing the Prince in a school production of Cinderella in which she was slated for the lead role before her illness prevented her participation.
Camino, as she is called in the film, deals with the pain and despair of her terminal decline by chasing enchanted mice through the escape hatch of her imagination where she once again becomes a happy, bouncing child. But the church appropriates her personal tragedy to inflate their own syllogisms, finding in her a misery to surpass all miseries, making a saint of a crippled child who rots in a hospital bed. As her illness progresses, it becomes more heartbreaking to witness her optimism in this dark word where suffering is a token of God’s favoritism.
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“The Shame” (Sat. Oct. 17 at 8 pm and Mon. Oct. 19 at 9 pm) is predicated on the idea that those who get lost in the woods don’t die of cold or hunger but from the shame of getting lost. In it, a man and wife who can barely keep themselves together are trying to convince a social worker that they are the right couple to raise an eight year old boy with behavioral disorders.
When the first fifteen minutes of a movie are spent in a kitchen with its characters discussing domestic problems against the backdrop of a refrigerator and a sink, you can be pretty sure you are watching a soap opera. Most of the scenes are played on the edge of hysteria, with the acting so sweaty with asthmatic panic that you expect the house to collapse on them. More unbelievable than the over-wrought performances is the brazenly moronic symbolism that represents a failing, stultified marriage as a broken chair in one scene and a stopped-up faucet in the next.
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“Ramirez” (Fri. Oct. 16 at 9:15 pm and Sun. Oct. 18 at 7 pm) is a coke dealer with an addiction to sex killings. He transgresses boundaries in a morally corrupt world, strangling prostitutes with the indifference of a baker kneading bread. Cristian Magaloni is not that fascinating to watch as the lead character, and first-time writer/director Albert Arizza lacks the intelligence and skill to make him represent anything greater than what he is. We feel less horror than boredom and disgust with his nightly escapades, and the ending, for anyone who has the least bit familiarity with Hitchock’s “Psycho,” is just stupid. Oh, and Geraldine Chaplin, who is top-billed, appears in only one scene.
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Set in a Barcelona slum, “One-Armed Trick” (Mon. Oct. 19 at 7 pm) tells a parable of the failure of capitalism in an economy where everything is off the books. Qui Que wants to build a recording studio so he can produce CD’s with his rapper/junkie friend Adolphe. He is like “Midnight Cowboy’s” Ratso with entrepreneurial spirit. The problem is that the only collateral he has for the money, materials, and services he is borrowing is the projected profits of a future robbery. With no protection, no insurance, everything he tries to build is subject to sudden ruin.
Although North America views much of the rest of the world as one of poverty, there is actually much wealth circulating among the citizens of so-called third world countries. It is, however, a wealth that is economically invisible. “One-Armed Trick” is a searing political/social tract dramatizing the belief that capitalism cannot succeed where there property without deeds, unlicensed businesses, and an undocumented labor force are the rule, not the exceptions.
For more information, including a complete list of events, go to
http://www.siff.net/cinema/seriesDetail.aspx?FID=169
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