Character and conversation as you've seldom seen 'em: Jonás Trueba's THE AUGUST VIRGIN

 

I suspect you'd have to go back to early Eric Rohmer to even vaguely approximate what you'll get in the new film from Madrid-born writer/director Jonás Trueba entitled THE AUGUST VIRGIN. And yet this Rohmer-esque outing is so overlayed with Spanish culture, character and language that --- other than realizing that the movie is basically all character-building via conversation -- even the low-key, ironic, philosophical and very French M. Rohmer may seem awfully far away. 

From the first scene and onward, there is such radiant warmth to this new movie, as an about-to-be-33-year-old woman meets the older man from whom she is subletting an apartment for a couple of hot August weeks -- the usual time when most Spaniards hightail it out of Madrid to let the tourists deal with the heat. Senor Trueba (shown at left) introduces us to his heroine, Eva (played by Itsaso Arana (shown above and below), who co-wrote the very good screenplay) as she meets and converses with man whose apartment she'll be living in for two weeks.

There is so much warmth and kindness expressed here that, from the outset, the movie emanates a sense of safety and good will so rare in films these days -- even in supposed comedies -- that you may not quite know what has hit you. If you're someone who demands action and adventure, you've already stopped reading. To set the record straight for the rest of you, let me not overpraise this little movie.

The August Virgin is a bit too long, and the first half is better than the second, though the latter is still quite good. But Trueba and Ms Arana have set up such an interesting character in Eva -- questioning, questing, intelligent, thoughtful, honest and hopeful -- that they don't quite deliver as fully as you may expect. Yet compared to much of what passes for adult entertainment today, they still succeed quite mightily.

The movie is full of small incident, as we follow Eva over her two-week period and meet all kinds of new characters, some of whom she already knows, others who are new to her. And though we don't come to know any of them nearly as well as we do Eva herself, each person we meet seems well worth our time and hers. 

Trueba captures the essence and enjoyment of companionship, of simply being together and savoring the moment as beautifully as few filmmakers have managed. The movie is cast exceedingly well, and every performer comes through in terms of creating a full-bodied character in the short time allotted, while entertaining us, too. Past loves appear -- one a definite "ex," the other maybe a wanna-be -- along with a slightly estranged friend and her new baby, a couple of British/Welsh ex-pats, a Reiki massage therapist who makes your period less painful, and finally a broodingly attractive fellow who seems to interest Eva in a way that is different from all the rest.

The filmmaker uses Madrid in a manner that should greatly benefit tourism (if the world ever opens up to all that once again) -- even in the heat of August. And if we leave the movie maybe wishing we'd learned just a little more about this special young woman, I think you will still be quite grateful for what you've experienced. From Outsider Pictures, in Spanish with English subtitles and running 129 minutes, The August Virgin hit virtual cinemas across the USA and Canada this past weekend. Click here for more information and to learn how and where you can view it now.

Pedro Almodóvar's PAIN AND GLORY is, yes, painful and glorious (and funny and moving, and subtle and smart)

Anyone who has followed the more-than-40-year career of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar can hardly help but have noticed the tonal change in his films from the crazy, highly sexual and often darkly comedic to the more serious -- if still sometimes dark and sexual -- explorations into family and Freud (granted, his very own version of the good doctor).

Almodóvar's later films may have been successful to varying degrees, just as were his earlier movies -- though to listen to some critics/fans, those early comedies were all fabulous and wonderful; instead, they too were a mixed bag -- yet one of the distinct pleasures of contemplating this man's fecund career (he is shown at right) comes in seeing, little by little, the enormous depth and growth involved.

TrustMovies is certainly not alone in finding his latest film, PAIN AND GLORY, the pinnacle and culmina-tion (but not the finale, I hope) of his career.

In it, Antonio Banderas (above and below) -- who has appeared in numerous Almodóvar films over the years and whose career took off via this filmmaker -- plays an aging filmmaker very much like Almodóvar, whose life story we see unfurl here via flashback and present-day excursions into his current life of enormous physical pain (everything from excruciating back pain to migraines),

drug addiction, the rekindling of both a friendship and a hugely important love relationship, and a possible career rehabilitation via the rediscovery of one of his successful older films.

If this sounds like a lot to cover in a mere two hours, let it be known that the filmmaker does it all with breathtaking skill, surprising subtlety and intelligence, the expected (but still gorgeous) visuals exquisitely combining composition and color, and drawing spot-on performances from a well-chosen cast that includes Penélope Cruz (above, playing his mother in her younger days) and Julieta Serrano (below, right, as older mom).

The two performance highlights, however, come from that fine Argentine actor Leonardo Sbaraglia (below, right), playing the ex-lover with such passion, wit and alertness that this pretty much constitutes a career-best role -- in a career that already has some really spectacular ones (Wild Horses, Intacto, Contestant and King of the Mountain),

and from Asier Etxeandia (below), as the ex-friend and actor who starred in the filmmaker's most famous work, now estranged but gleefully ready to reconnect via drugs and maybe a new acting role. Etxeandia is exciting to watch in action, and his role is one of the film's best written and realized, as well as its most complicated creation.

Almodóvar does not attempt to make his "hero'" all that heroic. He's a user -- not just of drugs but of people. Watch sadly at how he treats his devoted personal secretary (Nora Navas, below, right). But, oh, god, he is so human. And his creativity, from what we can gather, is worth saving and encouraging.

As the filmmaker's delightfully intelligent younger self, Asier Flores (shown at bottom) proves a real find. This youngster gets one of the film's perfect scenes, in which incipient sexuality overtakes our hero in one marvelous, sudden rush. No explanation necessary, and Almodóvar doesn't belabor the point. (Shown below is the amazingly sensuous César Vicente, who plays the key element in that pivotal scene.)

Another bit of perfection occurs at film's end, when the writer/director simply moves his camera just a tad, in the process quietly letting us know that, "Hey, it's only a movie, right?" Sure. But what a movie!

From Sony Pictures Classics (and I would guess a front-runner for Best Foreign Language Film nomination), in Spanish with English subtitles, and lasting 113 minutes, Pain and Glory, after opening in key cities, hits South Florida this Friday, October 18, all over the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas. To find the theater(s) nearest you, simply click here, then click on GET TICKETS, scroll down to the October 18 dates and find your local theater(s). Or just fill in your zip code in the blank space and make things even easier.

In Celia Rico Clavellino's JOURNEY TO A MOTHER'S ROOM, a daughter bonds even as she pulls away from mom

The multi-award-winning Spanish drama, JOURNEY TO A MOTHER'S ROOM, walked away with many Gaudi awards (the main film awards of Catalonia) but didn't win any of its four nominations in the yearly Goya awards (the premiere film awards of the entire country of Spain). The film, written and directed by Celia Rico Clavellino (shown below), is a small, intimate and I am guessing quite low-budget tale of the relationship between a nearly adult daughter and the single mother who clearly loves her offspring but maybe "mothers" her a bit too much.

This is a fairly simple tale, simply told (via stationary camera in front of which the actors and any action moves), and it is also, I must say, very slow-paced. But -- and this is a fairly big but -- the film is buoyed by two excellent performances: from famed Catalan actress, Lola Dueñas, (below left, as mom), and Anna Castillo (below, right) as the daughter.

The slow pacing has to do most with lack of incident to fill up the film's 95-minute running time. There is some, of course, but an awful lot of time is spent with the camera focusing on Ms Dueñas or Ms Castillo pondering. Both actresses do this very well, and Ms Clavellino, as filmmaker, is skilled enough to make certain we know what it is the characters are most likely thinking about. But a little of this goes a long way.

The film's theme would seem to be the moving of that daughter away from mom and toward her own life and career (if indeed a career is even available anymore to the youth of Europe and the West, given globalization and automation). But everything the daughter does -- supposedly going to London and getting a "nanny" job" -- we learn via phone conversation. And since the daughter is shown to be not very good at her old job in a garment manufacturing plant, gotten we assume by her mom's connection (mom was a much-loved seamstress there), and she lies to her mom about smoking, we do wonder if maybe she's telling the whole truth about London.

Well, probably, mostly, she is, but it is mom who registers strongly here. During daughter's time away, she must come to terms with loneliness and her place in the world, and she does blossom just a bit before reunion occurs. (A job creating costumes for a would-be talented dance troupe provides some incident and energy.)

In its way the movie is like a small but telling chapter in the lives and relationship of these two women. It's probably no turning point, and not much of anything is resolved. But there's enough character here, provided via the filmmaker and her actors, to make the viewing worthwhile. From Outsider Pictures, Journey to a Mother's Room opens here in South Florida today, Friday, May 17, in Miami at MDC’s Tower Theater, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, In Hollywood at the Cinema Paradiso (Select showings only), and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters.

Personal Appearances! 

The writer/director (above, left) and one of the stars of the film, Lola Dueñas (above, center) will attend the events listed below:
 
Savor Cinema, 503 SE 6 Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 on Friday, May 17 at 6:30pm for the reception and 7:30pm screening with a 9:00pm Q&A.

Living Room Theaters on FAU Campus 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431 on Saturday, May 18. Q&As will take place late afternoon/early evening. Click here for showtimes. Or call theater for further information: 561-549-2600.

Five fine films on Netflix streaming: LADY J, YOUR SON, MIRAGE, THE CLAPPER and A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE

Will Forte and Dohmnall Gleeson (shown below, left and right, respectively) are terrific in this very cleverly handled bio-pic about the two guys -- Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard -- who started the National Lampoon magazine and went on (one of them, at least) to give us a couple of raunchy/weird comedy classic movies: Animal House and Caddyshack. As written by Michael Colton and John Aboud, and directed with unshowy finesse by David Wain, the film grabs you from the outset via its very interesting narrator, who only grows much more so by movie's marvelous end. Filled with oddball fun and a main character who, though not all that likeable, via Forte's rich performance, holds you in

sway just fine, the film is abrim with nostalgia, all right, but even more with crack performances and smart writing that, thanks to Wain's great pacing, keeps things bouncing along delightfully until the bill must be paid. How this is handled is every bit as wonderful as all that has preceded it. The movie resonates emotionally without being at all sentimental or cloying. It's a great memorial to a very funny and special magazine and to the guys (and gals, one of these played by Natasha Lyonne, above, center) who created it.

******************

Special for a number of reasons, chief among these that, even as it holds a very necessary mirror up to the ways in which would-be "reality" TV corrupts us all, THE CLAPPER also manages to show us the kind of Hollywood characters that almost no movie wants to get near. These are the barely-making-it, little people, some of them pretty bizarre indeed, who live and work in a Hollywood that is anything but the land of our dreams. Writer/director Dito Montiel may not be a critics' darling, but even so, the lousy reception this unusual little film received seems to me very unfair.

Ed Helms (above, center right) and Tracy Morgan (center left) make a sad but quite believable pair of "clappers" -- those folk who act as supposed "real" audience members made to laugh, gasp and applaud on cue -- while Amanda Seyfried is sweet and pretty as the gas station girl on whom Helms has a crush. Where this movie goes and how it gets there is full of smart little touches and a quietly angry attitude toward fake fame. It's certainly not a perfect film, but it's so much better than so much that's out there, you ought to give it a try.

************************

Anyone who's been wondering why they don't make a romantic time-travel movie like the popular 1980 hit, Somewhere in Time (which was only so-so in any case), don't miss the Spanish film now streaming on Netflix entitled MIRAGE (Durante la tormenta is the original Spanish title). It's maybe ten times more convoluted and interesting than was that earlier time-travel romance, and in fact is much more than mere love story (which doesn't even kick in until half the movie is over). This is also one hell of a mystery -- about death and love and life and caring and very oddball electronics -- that should keep you guessing and more right up to its not-quite-good-enough conclusion.

Don't worry: So smartly paced, beautifully acted and cleverly invented (by writer/director Oriol Paulo of The Invisible Guest) is the tale, that I think you'll forgive an ending that doesn't quite make enough sense. With the fine Spanish actress Adriana Ugarte in the lead, and a very hot young actor, Chino Darín, as the cop on the case, the movie offers plenty of eye-candy as well as a nearly first-rate story, niftily told. I'd watch the entire movie again just for the marvelous scene of a young man waiting at a railway station and literally growing up in the process.

**********************

Get to know your children. Please! That would seem to be the important message of YOUR SON (Tu hijo), another Netflix movie from Spain and one of the darkest I've seen in some time. When the handsome late-teenage son of a successful doctor is beaten nearly to death outside a night club, his father becomes obsessed with finding out who did it and why. The journey takes him into uncharted territory, as this fellow -- who clearly has paid much more attention to his work than to his family -- slowly uncovers more and more ugly and unsettling information.

As directed and co-written by Miguel Ángel Vivas, of Kidnapped fame (or infamy), this much less "showy" movie is also a lot deeper. Extremely well-acted by the entire cast and especially by leading actor Jose Coronado (on the poster above), who brings gravity and tension to every one of his many scenes. He controls the movie, and by the time the film has reached its dark conclusion, you're with Señor Coronado in body, soul and hopelessness.

************************

Is there another current filmmaker who can write witty, scintillating, intelligent dialog about love, sex, relationships and hypocrisy better than Emmanuel Mouret? If so, I sure can't think who that he or she might be. After Shall We Kiss and Please, Please Me!, his latest endeavor, LADY J (original French title: Mademoiselle de Joncquières) should only burnish his reputation even brighter. Mouret has always seemed to me to be a modern-day Marivaux, but with this film he actually places his period a couple of centuries in the past to tell a tale of love and seduction, betrayal and revenge.

What makes this so very special, however, is Mouret's light-hearted and near-comical take on it all. Truly awful things transpire here, but so charmingly, graciously are they unveiled that we bounce right along with them, only slowly becoming aware of the cruel nature of what is going on. Still, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in any of its incarnations, this ain't.

The movie stars three terrific French actors: Cécile de France (at right, two photos up), Edouard Baer (left, two photos up) and Alice Izaaz (above), each of whom proves so right for the role that you can't imagine anyone else managing it this well -- with fine support from the likes of Call My Agent's Laure Calamy as the "best friend." As we watched, my spouse and I kept marvelling at the wonderful dialog, of which we wanted to savor every subtitled word: It's that delicious. Miss this one at your peril.

All five of the above films are streaming now via Netflix. I suggest a watch soon, however, as one never knows when a film will suddenly disappear from view.

Blu-ray debut for HORROR EXPRESS, in which two Hammer heroes meet some Spanish scares

HORROR EXPRESS was not actually a Hammer Film but it may seem like one, thanks to its stars -- Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, two stalwarts of the Hammer stable -- and subject matter, the latter of which spans space aliens, body hopping, bloody horror and zombies run amok. As written by Arnaud d'Usseau and Julian Zimet and directed by Spanish filmmaker Eugenio Martín (working here under the more American sounding name of Gene Martin), this 1972 movie is an oddball precursor to everything from The Hidden to The Walking Dead.

Senor Martín,  shown at right in his twilight years, did a workmanlike job of bringing all this together, while the decent enough acting from the leads and support, plus a very nice "period" look to the sets and costumes, combine to make the movie an enjoyable enough romp for those inclined to this genre.

The movie begins in Manchuria (or maybe points east) as Lee, playing one of his typical stern-faced scientists, discovers an ancient body encased in ice and then loads it onto the titular train (the original Spanish title of the film was Panic on the Transiberian Express).

Very soon, one train passenger after another is dying via bloody eyeballs and a very fast and thorough "brain wiping."

OK: By this point in time, we've seen it all before (or since), yet for fans of the horror/sci-fi/thriller genre, Horror Express offers enough decent delectation to pass muster. Cushing and Lee (above, left and right respectively) are solid fun, as usual, while the best supporting performance comes from Alberto de Mendoza (below) as a priest who is just as happy to serve Satan as God, so long as his master is really powerful.

The distaff side is represented by a couple of good-looking ladies -- one bad, the other good -- who get exactly the just desserts would would expect in this kind of movie. (That's Helga Liné, below, right, as the bad girl.)

In the final third, no less than Telly Savalas (below) makes his usual "bold" appearance, rather tossing a monkey wrench into things with his over-the-top style. But by then the movie itself has gone over the top, with even more soon to come.

So just settle back for a wild ride. And, for heaven's sake, don't look into that naughty monster's eyes! From Arrow Video via MVD Visual, and running 88 minutes, Horror Express leaves the station tomorrow, Tuesday, February 12, on Blu-ray -- for purchase and (one hopes) rental.

As usual with Arrow, there are bonus features aplenty. Click here to view all that you'll get in this particular package.

A Netflix no-no from Spain: Gonzalo Bendala's nitwit thriller, WHEN ANGELS SLEEP

That world-famous (and now seeming to exist just about everywhere in the world) streaming site Netflix has gifted us with lots of worthwhile movies to view, including more and more of which the company has itself distributed. Every so often, though, a real clunker appears in the mix, one that's dumb enough to make a warning worthwhile. Such a film is the new WHEN ANGELS SLEEP, written and directed by Gonzalo Bendala.

The original Spanish poster for the movie, shown below, asks the question: Cuando los angeles duermen, quien nos protege? which translates, TrustMovies believes, to When angels sleep, who protects us?  Here's a better and more useful question the movie-maker might have asked: When every decision made by every character in your film is completely stupid, how can your audience be expected to give a shit?

By the end of this 91-minute would-be dramatic thriller, I found myself talking back aloud to the screen so often, usually saying "For god's sake, don't do that!" that I had pretty much gone hoarse. This is particularly too bad because the film's cast deserves much better.

Lead actor Julián Villagrán (shown below, of Extraterrestrial) plays one of the heads of a Spanish insurance company who is trying to get home in time for his young daughter's birthday party. He is several hours' drive away, however, and so he makes just about every dumb decision possible in order -- or so it begins to appear -- not to get there.

Then we're introduced to a teenage girl who apparently has parent problems. She hates 'em, but from what we're allowed to see, they're merely typically clueless-about-teens, while she seems angry/ugly enough for hospitalization. As played by Ester Expósito (shown at top and below, of the recent and much better Netflix series, Elite), the young lady quickly tries your patience to the point where you're dismayed to realize that you'd be more than happy to see her dead.

And then we have our anti-hero's wife (Marian Álvarez, below), who -- in accepting her hubby's nonsensical excuses while also accepting the advances of next-door neighbor who's helping with that birthday party in lieu of dad --  seems to alternate between dumb and dumber. And if you imagine that the supporting characters are any better, give it up. They're not only just as dumb -- but a whole lot nastier.

Except the police. They're stupider than everyone else put together. Please: Tell me that Spain's cops, including the one in charge of the others here, are smarter than this?! Somebody? Anybody? Guess not. The really weird thing about this movie is that its ending is simply terrific. Or would be, if what preceded it had a trace of actual truth and did not seem instead to have been manipulated within an inch of its life.

This denouement could hardly be darker -- or more directly contradicting one's hopeful idea of any justice existing in our world. There's zero to be found here, which is a difficult, but sometimes salutary thing to accept. Unfortunately, instead of giving us reason/evidence to have to deal with this thesis, we get an uber crappy movie to precede this wonderfully dank and existential ending, one that is worthy, yes, of Beckett and/or Céline.

Streaming now via Netflix, When Angels Sleep, won't put you to sleep. But it will probably make you plenty angry -- and for more bad reasons than good ones.