SPANISH FILM WEEK 2014.

This year's Spanish Film Week looked like a way to burn seventeen bucks a ticket in it's early stages.  It's always possible that the pay wall kept me out of the better work. I had to miss new films with Ricardo Darin and Elena Anaya. You can't help wondering about this at an event where I sometimes found myself sitting in single figure audiences.Earlier events sweetened the mix with low comedies and animations of the kind this schedule could have made use of. We don't know whether these missed out or have vanished.

 

Invitee and part time X Man Alex Gonzales showed up in Daniel Calparsoro's Combustion, a dumb piece of road race thick ear action. Leon Siminiani's Mapa was a video diary that goes on too long without delivering, Paolo Fernandez-Vilata's Pearl of Jorge is a dialogue bound drama about writer Roberto Alvarez  sequestering himself in the isolated beach front home. Three 60 is an unthrilling thriller about organ theft, with bizare walk-ons by Geraldine Chaplin and Segundo Segura. Fedderico Luppi is as always commanding but Jorge Algora's Inevitable fails to use his blind man character to effect in an account of Dario Grandinetti's sex life. Ariel Windgrad's To Fool a Thief/ Vino Para Robar is a glossy but not clever enough caper piece.

Things picked up with Javier Ruiz Caldera's lightweight Three Many Weddings/ Tres bodas de mas featuring Inma Cuesta (Biancanieves) trying to convince us she was unglamorous because she wears glasses and breeds lobsters.  Santiago Zannou's Scorpion in Love/ Alacran enamorada,  proved a very visceral piece about Spanish Nazis with Xavier Bardem and Alex Gonzalez back again to more effect. He wants us to know he is really ripped - playing half a reel with him and Judith Diakate from Night of the Sunflowers naked & covered with drops of shower water. This one gets attention with lots of bodily fluids and a strong narrative contrasting the disciplined world of competition boxing and the destructive black shirts. Fernando Trueba's brother David did the appealing light weight Living is Easy with Eyes Closed/ Vivir es facil con los ojos cerrados featuring Almodovar regular Javier Camara, who uses Beatles lyrics to teach English, setting out to see John Lennon filming How I Won the War in Almaria and collecting a couple of teenage hitch hikers, Natalia de Molina and Francesc Colomer from the great Pa Negra, which puts two ticks against the career of a young actor whose just starting.

 

Star turn and the one thrashed in the publicity was the new Alex de Iglesea Withching and Bitching/ Las brujas de Zugarramurdi,  kicking off with body painted Jesus Christ knocking over a gold exchange with the aid of Minnie Mouse, Squarepants Sponge  Bob and the Invisible man and that's just the start of a piece which runs to cannibalism, car crashes, earth religion, a witches' gathering with nuns prominent, Carmen Maura making cell phone calls while standing on the roof and Caroline Bang in her black scanties  It’s take on the female condition is a show stopper. De Iglesia is on a roll following Ballad for a Sad Trumpet and As Luck Would Have It. He rates as one of the most important film makers in the world and it's disturbing to notice his reputation has yet to catch up with his achievements, while the critics still dote on Pedro Almodovar.