Never before the ticket office was more ridiculous and never before the festivals, one after another, they were capable of so much.
The comment, between resigned and only distracted, is from a Spanish producer while he entertains to take pictures with his mobile through the plane window that landslides in San Sebastian.
And in diagnosis, indeed, penance.
Newly finished a plethoric Venice festival that he has seen as Penelope Cruz conquered the Volpi Cup thanks to one of the most inspired films, by clear and emotional, from Pedro Almodóvar, starts the appointment from San Sebastián and makes him convinced his way to face him
On a historical occasion, to a kind of revalidation that who knows if it will not mark its future and the Spanish cinema itself.
In fact, everything are unavoidable commitments since Cannes converted its July call into an examination for global cinema after the pandemic and, from its hand, the platform bubble.
The appointment was released, with a historical gold palm very close to ‘electroshock’, by Julia Ducournau, and with a movie – ‘Drive My Car’, from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi– Entreasigned to become the
Cinematographic event of the decade.
In the Penelope Mostra, the same.
The recital of larger films from the Golden Lion of ‘The Event’, by Audrey Diwan, a ‘The Power of the Dog’, by Jane Campion, through ‘was the hand of God’, Paolo Sorrentino, did nothing more than
Confirm that the diagnosis of the occasional producer-photographer is correct.
San Sebastián has thus awarded this year the responsibility of measuring what Spanish production is capable, both socially and artistically and industrially.
On one side Almodóvar, what will be seen is the perfect x-ray of a cinematography, like most of them, on the verge of all the abysses.
The star movie, both for the position inside the grill (yours is on Saturday) as the matter with which it is dare, is ‘Maixabel’, of Icíar Bollaín.
If last year by these dates, the ‘Homeland’ series of Aitor Gabilondo on Fernando Aramburu’s novel was raising around something much more important than simple attention, this year is the story of the murdered widow by ETA Juan Mari
Júregui that claims the spotlights and until the certainty of the controversy.
If the cinema is of all the arts, the most approaches the mirror in its capacity not so much to reflect reality as to become its own object and at the same time differentiated from each one of us for reflection and common analysis, it is in movies
like this one where his relevance and his sense are played.
To the side of him, Fernando León de Aranoa offers in ‘the good pattern’ the same as he 20 years ago proposed with ‘Mondays to the Sun’, but it would be said that from the opposite side.
If that was a film about identity accidents in times of reconversion and unemployment, now he wants the comedy to breathe for the bonhomy of a cruel or sidesically kind businessman, as he wants.
A new challenge for Javier Bardem illustrious about the size of the giants.
Again, it is cinema about each of the fantasies, myths and even lies that make up and give meaning to reality;
It is cinema for the provocation and the debate.
The films of Paco Plaza and Manuel Martín Cuenca, ‘La Abuela’ and ‘La Daughter’, move in another record and in its disparity help to complete the picture of everything that a cinematography can be capable of.
From terror and ‘Thriller’ respectively, now is the genre that is summoned.
It is about two personal ways as coded to understand the cinema that serve to reflect on obsession with youth, over time, on motherhood or anger.
It would be to cover the cinema locker committed to question everything, even the voice from which it is spoken, and that would take care of the monumental tape ‘who prevents it’ by Jonah Trueba.
In about three and a half hours, the director dares to do the best and clearer as possible description of Spanish adolescence after a work on the ground of almost five years.
Is fiction with the same forcefulness as document;
It is fabulous and raw reality.
Everything at once.
If, in addition, we add the presentation of the most ambitious international series’ La Fortuna ‘by Alexander Alejandro and the closing tape (and chronicle of the dark side of the transition) of Daniel Monzón, which adapts Javier’s novel Fences’ LA LEAMS
of the border ‘, it is clear that never before and probably never after, San Sebastián has aroused as clearly and even dangerous the responsibility of giving or not the’ Placet ‘to Spanish cinema, to all of him as a whole and in a
So delicate moment … when the producers take pictures by the aircraft windows.
In any case, not everything starts and ends up in Spanish cinema.
In the Official Section, the one that measures everything, stand out as well known as those of Terence Davies, which presents ‘Benediction’ on the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, or Zhang Yimou, which opens the sample with its particular tribute to the cinema of the hand
of ‘One Second’.
That by the side of resplendent secrets like ‘Earwig’, the last work Lucile Hadzihalilovic, one of the most original looks of present cinema always committed to bringing the cinematographic expression to each of its limits;
or as ‘Vous Ne Desirez that Moi’, with which Claire Simon investigates, from the way she as close to the documentary to understand the staging, the life of the harsh lover lover;
or as ‘Arthur Rambo’ of a Laurent Cantet that recovers the nerve of the best jobs;
Or as the return of Claudia Llosa from the hand of ‘Distance of Rescue’, another of its always trembling and somewhat murky looks of intimacy.
They are just outstanding examples.
The part of the stars, that of the tributes and the one that collects a good part of the best jobs that have gone through by other festivals, is literally invaded.
On the side of the controversy, the Donostia Award for Johnny Depp years ago that depleted the tickets.
The festival defends his decision and puts on the table that the actor has never been tried or convicted of abuse.
On the other hand, there are few who call attention on the judgment of the British Court who touched the actor’s recourse against a journalistic reporting reporting at which all kinds of aberrations against which was the woman of him Amber Heard was described.
And so.
The other awarded, without anyone oppose it, is Marion Cotillard.
And not far from those of the previous paragraph, Charlotte Gainsbourg, which presents a documentary about his mother Jane Birkin;
Jessica Chastain, which brings Michael Showalter’s film ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’;
The writer Emmanuel Carrère premiere the new work of him as director ‘on a dock in normacy’;
Paolo Sorrentino, who exhibits the brand new prize in the last Venice for the most personal film about him … and Todd Haynes, Sean Baker, Julia Ducournau, Carlos Saura …
Let’s say that rarely before, San Sebastián acknowledged so many names and, perhaps for that, never before the Spanish cinema was left so much to play it may everything.
Undoubtedly, the best possible photo of Spanish cinema … that is seen from the window of an airplane.
