Cinema 'addiction,' hispanophiles and life's absurdities

MANILA, Philippines - When was the last time a film affected your life? We remember the whole world raving about Christopher Nolan’s Inception and how it delved into the mysteries of dreams. It felt like The Matrix all over again when viewers could not help but doubt human existence and the capacity of our minds. Does our mind expand when all of this is over? What happens when we “wake up”?

And then, there’s the much-awaited, inspirational Eat, Pray, Love, which takes the character of Julia Roberts to endless Italian gastronomy, Indian spirituality and a discovery of destiny in Indonesia. We won’t blame you if, after watching this Ryan Murphy adaptation, you start packing your bags for a journey to wherever your feet take you. Recently, it was the Argentine film El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Mystery of Your Eyes) by Juan Jose Campanella that caught the attention of foreign language film viewers. Last Monday, we encountered several cinephiles at Greenbelt 3. For this author, it was a usual Monday movie marathon and a perfect time to watch a random film at the annual Pelicula Spanish Film Fest. Campanella’s legal drama begins with a love story where a crime takes place and leads to a disturbing resolution. A woman is raped and murdered at her own home and the protagonist, a tribunal employee named Benjamin Esposito, takes on a mission to solve the case. He catches the murderer, but politics in government sets the criminal free. After 25 years, Esposito revisits the case by writing a novel about his judicial life. If you watch the ending closely, you might witness the most absurd scene you’ve ever seen.

“It’s an addiction you just can’t get enough of,” according to festival organizer Instituto Cervantes de Manila. This year, hispanophiles will once again dive into the realities and peculiarities that several Spanish language films portray. “Due to the success of the first eight seasons, we are especially proud of the reputation the Película film festival has developed over the years as a great local venue to feature and premier award-winning Spanish films,” says Instituto Cervantes director Jose Rodriguez. “We believe Película has the potential to foster incredible growth in arts and entertainment and attract the best of the best-acclaimed Spanish and Latin American filmmakers to this area.” And in the case of Camapanella’s 2009 Oscar Awardee for Best Foreign Language Film, the disturbing conclusion (that shows the murderer spending his 25 years as “prisoner” inside the barn of the victim’s widower) will stick to your mind. And in the case of this author, it has been a recurring dream.

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Pelicula Spanish Film Festival 2010 Schedule

October 8, Today

4:30 p.m., Bolivia

Director: Adrian Caetano

Synopsis: Freddy immigrates to Argentina hoping to get a better life, leaving his family in Bolivia, his homeland. However, Argentina’s capital city is not a paradise, especially for immigrants like him. In spite of the adversities, he manages to get a job as a cook in a restaurant.

7 p.m., Celda 211

Director: Daniel Monzón 

Synopsis: The very same day Juan starts working as a prison civil servant he gets trapped in a riot. He then pretends to be a prisoner in an attempt to protect his life and to end up with the prisoner’s rebellion. Juan has to use his intelligence and wit in order to face that unpredictable and paradoxical situation.

9:30 p.m., El secreto dE sus ojos

Director: Juan José Campanella 

Synopsis: Benjamin Esposito is a judicial employee who is about to retire and starts writing a novel about a criminal case that had happened years ago, and to which he had been the witness and the protagonist. Writing the book about the murder, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1974, leads him to investigate his own past and a period of Argentina’s history marked by violence and death and where nothing was what it seemed to be.

12 m.n., Que se meuran los feos

Director: Nacho G. Velilla

Synopsis: Eliseo is ugly, cripple and single. He has never found the woman of his dreams and does not know what love is. Nati is ugly, she lost a breast and divorced. She once found the man of her dreams but in spite of that she doesn’t know what love is either. Eliseo thinks the worst things in love are still to come. Due to his mother’s death he is confronted with Nati once more in his life, after 20 years, to give them their last chance to be happy and fall in love. But what happens when the woman of your dreams happens to be married to your brother?

October 9, Tomorrow

2 p.m., Desierto adentro

Director: Rodrigo Plá

Synopsis: Elías has sinned and fears a premature death as a punishment from God. In an attempt to stop that fatal sentence, he will devote his life to building a church to beg for pardon from God. The story is narrated from Aureliano’s point of view, the youngest son of the family who will portray the family through religious altarpieces.

4:30 p.m., La teta asustada

Director: Claudia Llosa 

Synopsis: Fausta suffers from “scared breast”, an illness passed on to children by women who had been ill-treated under the Peruvian terrorist regime. Children infected with this illness are born without a soul and carry such fear during their lives that it isolates them completely. Furthermore, Fausta keeps a secret that she is not willing to reveal.

9:30 p.m., Nacidas para sufrir

Director: Miguel Albaladejo

Synopsis: Flora is 72 years old and has spent most of her life putting the needs of her family ahead of her own. Flora has never married or had children, and when her sister died unexpectedly, she took in her three nieces and raised them to adulthood. Now that she’s growing old and having trouble caring for herself, Flora imagines that her nieces will live up to their familial obligations, but she’s horrified to discover the women aren’t much interested in helping her, and plan to stick her in the Catholic retirement home where Marta works when the time comes.

12 m.n., La mujer sin piano

Director: Javier Rebollo 

Synopsis: Woman Without Piano portrays 24 hours in the domestic, professional and sexual everyday life of a 21st century housewife in Madrid. One night, she decides to escape and she tells us the story of that one and only night with all the secrets, the humour and the absurdities that the night unfolds.

October 10, Sunday

2 p.m., Manolito Gafotas

Director: Miguel Albaladejo

Synopsis: Summer is looking bad for Manolito Gafotas. He is doomed to spend his holidays in his small flat in Madrid with his mother, his grandfather and his younger brother. He is looking forward to the arrival of his father, who is a lorry driver and who will take them on holidays to the beach.

4:30 p.m., Tres dias con la familia

Director: Mar Coll  

Synopsis: Lea has to go to Girona unexpectedly as her grandfather has just passed away. There, she will meet her family, who she hasn’t seen since she left to live abroad. The three days of the wake, the mass and the funeral are full of nostalgia and grief brought about by death. It is also a good time to put an end to the show of appearances put on by this bourgeoisie in their decline. Lea rebels against this world of hypocrisy, although it clings to her skin like a tailor-made suit.

7 p.m., Happyland

Director: Jim Libiran

Synopsis: A Spanish missionary priest starts an unthinkable project in one of Manila’s most impoverished districts. He seeks to build a team for a football tournament. He wants to show Tondo residents that people can always change for the better. He uses football to make his point. For more than two decades, several generations of young men rose from the garbage dump to seek glorious victory. Nobody knows what became of these fearsome opponents — only their stories remain. They are remembered as the “legendary barefoot players” of Tondo.

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Source: www.pelicula.ph.