I’m So Excited

There is definitely more sex in Spanish films. And they certainly talk more openly about it, even allowing for scriptwriters who come up with odd characters. It’s fun and it’s refreshing.

I’m So Excited is Pedro Almodóvar’s new film about a plane load of passengers trapped up in the air, who go slightly crazy while they wait to see what will happen. (I’m grateful I have no immediate plans to fly anywhere.)

There is an amusing cameo appearance from Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, and I suspect it could all have been their fault that what happens happens.

Even with my limited experience of Spanish films, this plane is full of people I know from somewhere else. Looking in the cockpit was like watching Airplane again. I wouldn’t trust the pilots in the slightest. They drink. They have sex. They have increasingy weird conversations with passengers who just pop in, with the cabin crew, and with their families at home.

The cabin crew are crazy. They drink. They have sex. They bicker. And that’s the ones who are awake.

The relatively few passengers in business class are also somewhat crazy. One professional escort, one virgin, a newly married couple, an assassin, a dishonest – but lovely – banker and a lying actor. They drink. They have sex. They phone home.

It’s absolutely crazy. But they are so friendly, in that Spanish way, that you kind of love them. You don’t want to be on a plane with them, though. Not a plane in difficulties, anyway.

It’s sex, drugs and rock’n'roll all the way.

(At Cornerhouse)

A Hijacking

A Hijacking is a hard-hitting Danish film on a subject most of us know little about, and tend to forget if we can. Any hijacking is bad, and Somali pirates seem to be working at the worst end of it.

When shipping CEO Peter decides to do his own negotiating after one of his cargo ships is hijacked, he does so against the advice of English advisor Connor, who nevertheless is beside Peter every step of the way. And it’s a long way.

As a counterbalance to the well-dressed powerful men in Copenhagen, we have Mikkel, the ship’s cook. He is no hero, but he is brave in the face of this sudden violence and cruelty. He begs his boss to pay the ransom, and he begs the pirates’ ‘negotiator’ for food and kindness and fresh air.

It’s heartbreaking to see the dirty struggle on board, and to see how they are trying to do a good job in Denmark. When Peter wanders off script one day, it ends with a shot at the other end. You can almost see the thoughts in this powerful man’s head as he realises his actions may have cost someone their life.

And still, we have already seen him being the hard negotiator in a ‘normal’ business deal, so why feel sorry for him?

You can tell it has to end reasonably well for most of the characters, but the situation is so tense, you must also be aware that for some it can’t end well. Who, and how?

The Danes seem naïve a lot of the time. It’s easy to be like that, when you’re nice and safe. But the Somalis are also naïve in some way, believing that there is any amount of money to be had in return for freeing people who shouldn’t have been held hostage in the first place.

In a way, not a lot happens. But you sit transfixed by what’s going on. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s say that I would have expected the men’s beards to have grown much longer while this situation lasted.

Now that we are on such intimate terms with so many Danish actors, it was good to see Borgen’s Kasper as Mikkel, and Sarah Lund’s first detective partner Meyer as Peter.

(At Cornerhouse until 16th May)

Below is an interview on Danish television with Gary Skjoldmose Porter, who not only plays the British expert in the film, but is a British expert outside the film as well.
http://go.tv2.dk/morgentv/id-56761521.html

The Annexe at Cornerhouse

Knowing that the food at Cornerhouse is good, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to find they cater well for events, too.

Yesterday – as Bookwitch – I went to a book event at the Annexe at Cornerhouse, and although they called it breakfast, I didn’t expect to be so well fed. After all, it was seeing and hearing the authors that was important. Meeting others. Networking a little.

Nice room. Easy to get to by train. The weather was good, but I’m guessing I can’t praise Cornerhouse for that. But it meant that the little outside area looked particularly attractive, and it made me want to sit there. Except then I wouldn’t have been able to hear Melvin Burgess and the other Chicken House writers read from their books.

When I saw the rolls – freshly made, and to a nice recipe – filled with sausages and bacon I wasn’t at all hopeful. But lo and behold; they had veggie sausages as well! I should only have eaten one, though. The reason for my lack of control was they tasted so good.

But so did the cake that came after. One cake or two? Carrot cake or blueberry muffin? I did what others did. Ate one and sneaked the other into my bag. (And obviously went without lunch, which is a severely under-used phrase in my life.)

And in my usual illogical fashion I began thinking about a reason to hire the Annexe. That must be a sign that either I am crazy, or they are good. It could be both. Probably is.

I’m so excited!

It’s not always a film title matches how I feel, but Pedro Almodóvar’s new film  I’m So Excited! certainly does.

Cornerhouse will screen the UK launch of the film, featuring a live satellite Q&A with Almodóvar afterwards, on 23rd April at 18.30.

‘After the more serious territory of his recent output the film is being hailed as a return to his comic roots, and features cameos from familiar faces Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz.  A group of travellers face a life-threatening situation on board a plane to Mexico City and, trapped in a confined space, they let off steam, attempt to seduce and be seduced, lie to themselves and each other, and battle with fear, loneliness and the prospect of death.’

Sounds pretty good.

Q&A with Alfonso, Alberto and Àlvaro

Hardly surprising that Carmen who chaired the post-screening Q&A session at Cornerhouse last night got the three men mixed up. So many Als to keep track of!

This is the kind of thing Cornerhouse does best; great entertainment, followed by talking to the people involved, usually actors or directors to do with the film. Last night’s talk about El mundo es nuestro was no exception. We’d seen Alfonso Sánchez and Alberto López in the bar earlier, and it was fascinating to see them go from being two perfectly normal and charming men, to the crazy small time crooks they play in the film. Producer Álvaro Alonso joined them for the onstage chat in cinema 1.

El mundo es nuestro is a small budget film with big results, that Alfonso started to write back in 2009, before Spain had a financial crisis. Which just goes to prove how far-sighted he was. (I doubt we can blame Alfonso.) He was pleased that the Manchester audience seemed to ‘get’ his film.

The three Als explained how they got the funding (you can’t make a film with €30,000). People wanted to support them because they were famous, but they reckon that kind of thing only works once. Their feeling is we need more humorous films about the bad economy.

Spanish television didn’t want to screen El mundo es nuestro, and didn’t advertise it at all. It’s forbidden to forbid this kind of thing, so they didn’t. You’d think that the current crisis would encourage more films on the subject, but the Als said they are the only ones.

There have been no nominations for awards for the actors. ‘Strange country, Spain.’ To them it’s important that the film gets distributed internationally, and at home they have offered cheap cinema tickets for various groups, at a variety of venues, including – I think – prisons. The prisoners related well to crooks Cabesa and Culebra; they were just like them.

Their reasons for making the characters stereotypes was to have a small community inside the bank in the film; one that audiences could recognise and identify with. Alfonso said he listened to the actors and let them decide how they wanted to portray their characters. And to save money – I think – he used his own father for the role of the man his own character hits in the film. A bit Freudian, he reckons.

Alfonso didn’t mention this, so Alberto did it for him. He has been given an award for his writing. Well deserved, especially for someone who feels he is no writer, because waking up every morning, getting the coffee, staring out of the window, etc, is so hard.

They love British actors, and the fact that they are respected. In Spain all actors are supposedly ‘reds’ and receive no respect. They aspire to be an Olivier, or a Pacino.

Well, those of us who stayed after the screening loved you. We loved that you tried to speak English to us, and we loved the t-shirts. Please come again, and meanwhile we will tell all our friends (not that we have many) to illegally* download El mundo es nuestro. Or even pay for it, so you can afford to make more films.

(*I only say this because they jokingly said we could. We are very law-abiding here. We have no friends, anyway. And hopefully our money is safe in that Spanish bank we have an account with…)

El mundo es nuestro

You don’t often get films that are a delight from beginning to end, with a great deal of humour and excitement, as well as having a political message. El mundo es nuestro has all of that, and packs it in in under an hour and a half. Good thing, probably, since I don’t know how long we could have gone on laughing without damaging something vital.

Last night at Cornerhouse was the second and last screening of El mundo es nuestro, so if you haven’t already been, I’m sorry, but you’re too late. Although, you could buy it, and help support a poverty stricken film venture. And when you’ve seen the film, tell all your friends.

The plot is simple enough, but simple usually works best. Two crazy small time crooks decide to rob a bank. They are no good at it, and the heist goes wrong and there are so many improbable developments that you wouldn’t believe it. But basically, the two end up taking the people in the bank hostage.

We get to know the life stories – almost – of the bank’s customers, and also that of the police on the outside, while they are working to resolve the hostage situation. This being Seville, religion and tradition have their parts to play, and having a police officer from Burgos is not so good. Or perhaps it is.

It’s mostly about Spain sinking quickly into its ‘unexpected’ financial crisis, and the effect this has on ordinary citizens. It’s a film with a heart (a very big heart) and it is very Spanish, and incredibly funny. My companion laughed like crazy throughout, and left Cornerhouse looking up where she could buy the DVD, so she can watch it again, and subject all her friends to the film as well.

It’s just wonderful!

La vida empieza hoy

I’ve said it before; the Spanish are far more open about sex. La vida empieza hoy is a rather sweet and humorous film about growing old, and about ‘discovering’ sex.

‘But you are 70 years old!’ is what the rather blinkered middle generation says to their ageing parents as they discover the old people might actually have an interest in sex. So they pretended they were going to exercise classes, when in actual fact they were attending (re)discover sex classes for the elderly.

This is a funny and charming film where the grandfather moves in with his son’s family, meets a new love, and finds he can talk more about this with his teenaged grandson (and that’s not all they do) than with his son.

We have the woman whose daughter gives up her own happiness for her ‘old’ mother, and is furious to find this old person has a new life, which includes a boyfriend.

The grandparents who have no time for each other, what with looking after the grandchildren, leading to gran visiting a sex shop accompanied by toddler and baby in a pushchair.

Or the archetypal older Spanish widow who thinks primarily about death, until she discovers her inner sensuality, and the ‘chickpea,’ to the extent that she wants to divorce her dead husband.

Wonderful film! So don’t write off all oldies just yet.

Violeta se fue a los cielos

Forty years ago Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra struck me as old. She was also dead, which probably made her seem older still to a teenager. I listened to more of her songs sung by others, than to her own soundtracks. I found her voice a little scary at the time, whereas in the biographical film Violeta se fue a los cielos, it was the woman Violeta who scared me more.

She had a hard life, which makes her most famous song Gracias a la vida all the more surprising. She committed suicide at the age of 49, and in the film it seemed as if she was falling out with everyone around her. She acted crazy, and I’d guess people close to her never knew whether she was going to be nice, or scold them.

But she wrote fantastic songs and her legacy to the world is a powerful one. Hearing Arriba quemando el sol in the film gave me the goosebumps. Violeta was very determined, even from a young age. The film jumps back and forth a little too much, and it’s not always easy to know if we get the child Violeta or the woman, or what age adult she is.

Àngel Parra is someone I do remember from back then, but I had managed to forget about him in the intervening years. Here he was as the young son tramping the Chilean countryside with his half crazed mother. She travelled around to learn traditional songs from other singers. Then she wrote her own.

She was a worthy heroine to have, back when we still believed in the possibility that a revolution might be successful. We thought it could be done with music. Violeta must have hoped so, too. And then perhaps she realised it was not to be.

I don’t know.

Powerful, and heart-wrenching, film. It’s worth it for the music, though.

(On at Cornerhouse on Sunday as well.)

30 años de oscuridad

Maybe now is the time to look back at Spain under Franco. Currently there seems to be more about this period than I can ever recall seeing. We knew about the oppression, but it is easy for the outsider to forget. Today Spain is like any other modern European country.

But until 1969 it didn’t let go of the civil war or the repercussions it still meted out to those on the wrong side. In most wars, once it’s over, it’s over, and even the losing side has rights. The Spanish Reds (i.e. anyone not on Franco’s side) didn’t.

30 años de oscuridad is a film that will hopefully remind those of us who forgot. It’s about the people who hid after the civil war ended. It’s about what it’s like to hide for thirty years. What it’s like for the families of the ‘moles’ and the ever present fear of discovery. Your friends and neighbours would give you away to save themselves.

The film is based on a book written about these people, and mainly about the mayor of Mijas, Manuel Cortés, and it’s part ‘interview’ and part animation. The moles are dead now, but their children and grandchildren remember them. Tremendous film, hardhitting, and if you haven’t come across a garrote before, you can count yourself lucky.

30 Years of Darkness is on at Cornerhouse on March 12th and 23rd as part of the ¡Viva! film festival.

¡Atraco!

Think Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, but set in 1950s Madrid, and where Don Quijote and his faithful servant are Argentinians reluctantly posing as Uruguayans. That’s ¡Atraco! for you. It’s the film chosen by Cornerhouse for the opening gala of Spanish language film festival ¡Viva! on Friday evening.

You’d do well to remember that it’s described as tragi-comic cine noir, because for all its bumbling, inept and comic plot, it has a surprising depth and seriousness to it. Set partly in Panamá, where the deposed Perón lives, post-Evita, his supporters want to arrange for him to go into exile in Spain, and to finance it they pawn Evita’s jewels in Madrid. Unfortunately Doña Carmen, wife of Franco, takes a liking to them and the jewels have to be rescued by  pre-arranged robbery.

One of Evita’s former security guards gets the job, along with a young man they just happen upon one day. They have the will, but they don’t really have the ability, to carry through this heist. Plenty of comedy, some romance, bad language (the young man says coño a lot, in order to ‘blend in’) and plenty of digs at Uruguayans.

Beautiful film by Eduard Cortés, starring actors from both sides of the Atlantic, and a timely reminder that it wasn’t that long ago when Spain was governed by a dictator. Easy to forget how bad it was, while on the surface it remained almost normal.

Perón’s fondness for dancers gets a mention, and Isabel features briefly. But no one can hold a candle to the beloved Evita. She commands loyalty even from the grave, and her servants are willing to die for her.