Strangers on a mountain

This is a Festival review of Fiction (Ficcío) (2006)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 September (expanded version to come)

This is a Festival review of Fiction (Ficcío) (2006)

This film by Catalan film director Cesc Gay, Fiction (Ficcío) (2006), screened (at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday 6 September) as part of Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF), curated by Ramon Lamarca (for the third year running)

When a collection of that urbane Argentinian writer and librarian Jorge Luis Borges’ stories (and pseudo-essays) was made under the title Ficciones*, that word, although so close to Fictions, had a significance that the English substitute lacks, but which is present in : fictive / fictitious / fictional .

As with Russell Hoban, Borges’ writing career seems to have circled around the nature of reality – what is subjective, what is objective – in miniatures such as ‘The Secret Miracle’ (‘El Milagro Secreto’, published by Sur in 1943) to ‘Borges and I’ (‘Borges y Yo’, first seen in the UK (?) when translated in the collection Dreamtigers, originally The Maker (El Hacedor), which was published in 1960. There are similar hints here that Fiction (Ficcío) (2006) is not quite what it seems:

Is, then, that sequence with the cabin a sly reference to the episode on Mt Olympus in John Fowles’ bestseller The Magus** (in its way, a masterclass in the novel as mirage and deception) ? And what does, amongst other things, the perspective of the video footage that we see several times at the start indicate about [the status of] what we are seeing (and yet, despite ourselves, get drawn into) ?

Do we, by our engagement, act out a fantasy of identification with what we know is fiction that is mimetic of the development what we come to see on the screen ? One has to ask, not just because of Gay’s later film V.O.S. (2009) (as screened at Cambridge Film Festival 2012), with its playful insistence not so much on blurring (as maybe here) as rather contraposing a film with its own making, but also simply because one does not draw attention to fictitiousness without a reason :

We have here both being fecund (here, as in the later film, there is a pregnancy shared by friends), making new relationships, and the creativity at the heart of being fictive (it is not for nothing that Àlex (Eduard Fernandez) makes films and has come to Santi’s house to try to work on a screenplay), yet, at the same time, mortality, getting lost (which, with Dante’s example***, bears more than one interpretation at once), and what Hoban (using a Spoonerism in his title for an essay (collected in The Moment under The Moment****) called Blighter’s Rock.

Words like bitter-sweet were coined for films such as this, where its script (co-written by Cesc Gay with Tomàs Aragay) additionally, calculatedly yet not unkindly, plays with our preconceptions (as Gay continues to do in V.O.S.***** (a video-clip can be seen here), such as where Àlex is when he arrives at Santi’s, and who Santi (Javier Cámara) and he are to each other, since they josh as if they are a gay couple – or who Judith (Carme Pla) is in relation to them both.

Earlier, we have seen Àlex arrive, we have seen a neighbouring property for sale and firewood being tipped off the back of a lorry at his direction, and we have (provisionally) tried to make sense of these elements, and of his reactions to the property and its contents (including Santi’s portrait on canvas (with cactii)).

Then, at first sight of Mònica (Montse Germàn), we – and Àlex – seem to say ho-hum at her being a violinist, a fellow creative, both because we are trying to get a toe-hold in this situation (where, all of them together over dinner, Santi feels able to make off-colour sexual remarks out of the blue) – and Àlex seems so wrapped up in his world, where he turns things down almost as a stock reaction (as protection for his time and work, which seem to be – and so he is unproductive ? – preoccupying his mind, as it does (though much more so, and naggingly) in Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect (1987)).


Yet for all the knowingness (or because of it ? – after all, the film is Ficcío, which is a feminine Catalan noun, capable of meaning invention or fabrication), what unfolds seems on a plane akin to the fantastic in A Canterbury Tale (1944) or Roman Holiday (1953)…

Or it feels more like a David Lean for our times than a Vendredi soir (2002) (or a precursor to Midnight in Paris (2011)).

Were it not, though, for the very end of the film, whose unfolding, for its latency, is almost as much a miracle as that of [Nuovo] Cinema Paradiso (1988) : in the centre of the film, Judith and Santi seemed almost intent on leaving Àlex and Mònica behind (though we later learn that they have other reasons to have done so) – and with but the vaguest of instructions where to meet – and, as Santi (who has fallen asleep) has given access to his video-footage to Sílvia (Àgata Roca***), we wondered what images he may have caught.

Is this fabrication within the terms of the story itself, a product of time, place and behaviour, or is it simultaneously that the film itself, an invention just as much as the words and music of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds that we hear, effortlessly leaves us with the notion that we have maybe co-created the film with Gay, by our attention and participation ?


End-notes

* First published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1962. Then issued by Calder in its Jupiter series in 1965 (and later reprinted by Calder & Boyars).

The first part of Fictions is already a volume, under the title The Garden of Forking Paths; the second is headed ‘Artifices’, another resonant word.

** Resented because he did not think it the best of his work, but writers from Hoban (the success of whose Riddley Walker (from 1980) in no way seemed to promote the rest of his novels – not evenFremder (from 1996) ?) to A. A. Milne or Tove Jansson have found (or would have found) that what they thought best is not always what they are (or will be) known / remembered for…

*** Inferno, Canto I, lines 2 to 3 :
[M]i ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.


**** Jonathan Cape, London, 1992.

***** Where Àgata Roca, who appears later on, is part of the two interrelated couples, along with Vicenta Ndongo (who played Mar Vidal in Tasting Menu (Menú degustació) (2013), also screened in this year’s Camera Catalonia strand).


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 Part I : Q&A with Mar Coll, director and co-writer of We All Want What's Best For Her (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 September

Summary account of a Q&A at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 with Mar Coll, director and co-writer of We All Want What’s Best For Her (Tots volem il millor per a ella) (2013)

* Contains spoilers *

As detail fades already, this is necessarily an impressionistic account of a Q&A that followed the second screening, at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF), of We All Want What’s Best For Her (Tots volem il millor per a ella) (2013) with director and co-writer Mar Coll, and hosted by the curator of Camera Catalonia (for the third year running), Ramon Lamarca, at 1.00 p.m. on Friday 5 September

Next on the blog (the 1,000th posting), a write-up of Q&A2 from @camfilmfest with Mar Coll, director of We All Want What's Best For Her...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 13, 2014

The first screening of We All Want What’s Best For Her at Cambridge Film Festival, at 6.15 p.m. on Thursday 4 September, had been a UK premiere and so was also followed by a Q&A*.

Ramon Lamarca and Mar Coll at Festival Central - image courtesy of Tom Catchesides

To judge only by the end of that previous Q&A, this second one maybe gave a little too much weight to the question of Geni’s character (played beautifully by Nora Navas**) being a woman. That said, Ramon has since indicated that, because Birds Eye View is interested in and for exploring issues of gender and society (in relation to film-making), they had been very present in the discussion on Thursday evening – some might therefore be coincidentally interested in the following Tweet :

25 best films directed by women http://t.co/sHRuxtFxc7
— Raindance Film Fest (@Raindance) September 14, 2014

The reason for asking about Geni’s gender is that the main friend, on whom the film’s handling of the topic of recovery Mar Coll and her co-writer had based the premise, was a man called Eugènio (hence Eugènia, shortened to Geni) – maybe one of those slightly irritating facts that everyone wrongly thinks that they are alone in having heard and then so many people ask about it…

In fact, Mar did not think that it would have made much / any difference for Geni’s character to have stayed as a man (and, unfortunately, the reason that she gave for making the change has not registered mentally). [However, one is – only slightly – reminded of Cambridge Film Festival 2011, and confronting British actor and first-time director Paddy Considine with the possibility of such a reversal in his Tyrannosaur (2011), i.e. the idea of Peter Mullan’s character Joseph switching, say by becoming Josephine, with that of the now-everywhere Olivia Colman, so that we have a battered man (they exist), rather than a battered woman…]

For those who had seen Mar’s film before, this repeat screening was an opportunity to notice that, however ambiguously (and, of course, fully deliberately so) the question of paying the taxi-driver may have been left, we do not see Geni’s wedding ring after when she decided (after a hesitation) to leave it with him as a ransom,: the driver has been mean to her, and could she – on some level – have been acknowledging her husband Dani’s own meanness and have been making a symbolic sacrifice ? (For example, we soon see Dani (Pau Durà) criticizing Geni for stumbling in her speech, not talking in full sentences because she is upset, and how he patronizingly cajoles her, whilst all the time calling her ‘babe’.)

Mar acknowledged the possibility (which another audience member thought might even have been at the subconscious level of a Freudian slip) that parting with the ring is symbolic : as expected in the best of film-making, Mar wants the viewer to conclude what he or she thinks happened before / is happening on screen. (So when, after the Q&A, it was briefly mentioned that maybe Geni senses that Dani is attracted to Geni’s sister Raquel (Àgata Roca***), and perhaps has even been having an affair with her, Mar just agreed about the attraction, and left the rest as a possibility**** (although it is consistent with Dani’s lack of arousal when Geni, feeling close to him, tries to initiate sex on her return home, if he had been with Raquel earlier.))

Portrait of Mar Coll by, and image courtesy of, Tom Catchesides (@TomCatchesides)

As to future projects, Mar tempted us with mention of an exploration that she is doing with a group of film students, working on an adaptation of a Pinter play, and which your correspondent established to be Betrayal. When Mar asked, many of us knew the play, even the Jeremy Irons / Ben Kingsley / Patricia Hodge film (which Mar indicated that she was less keen on), so that sounds something to look forward to…


To come (when time / energies permit) : transcript / write-up of a interview that Mar Coll kindly gave about the film and its main character…

In the meantime, this is a link to a pre-Festival review (written with the kind assistance of Ramon, the producers of the film, and the Festival), which this account of the Q&A, and, in due course, the interview are intended to amplify (as the review had consciously been of a non-spoilery nature)


End-notes

* At which Tom Catchesides’ (@TomCatchesides’) striking double portrait of Mar and Ramon was taken, when Ramon interviewed Mar (together with Birds Eye View) :

** Whom we had seen before, in the Catalan strand at the Festival in 2012, as the mother in Black Bread (Pa negre) (2010).

*** Whom we also saw during the Catalan strand two years ago, in V.O.S. (2009), and also this year in Camera Catalonia, in the same director’s (Cesc Gay’s) earlier Fiction (Ficció) (2006), which screened at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday 6 September – review to come...

**** At Enric’s – Geni and Raquel’s father’s – lunch-table, we seem to gather that Dani and Raquel knew / shared with each other at university, which strengthens the parallel drawn in the review with that wonderful predecessor Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Mar was pleased with that link, and also with having spotted the design influence of Allen’s earlier, neglected drama Interiors (1978) (for making which he had to endure such criticism, even abuse, because it was a drama, not comedy :

A style of film to which, after Match Point (2005) and Cassandra’s Dream (2007) (a review that, implausibly, has more than 10,000 page-views on the blog…), he has only fully returned to great acclaim, in Blue Jasmine (2013).)


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What is Catalan cinema ?

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 June (updated 20 August)

What is Catalan cinema ?

[Now, in 2017, with its own sequel : What more is Catalan cinema ?]

Update : click here to go to outlines of three Catalan films
at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 and links to reviews

In advance of the 34th Cambridge Film Festival (#CamFF via @camfilmfest), and also of a screening at London’s ICA (@ICA) on 27 June of El bosc (The Forest) (2012) (a film that had its UK premiere when shown at last year’s Festival¹ – as did three other Catalan films), here is a little look at where films like this come from – geographically, temperamentally, and emotionally…

Catalan cinema : Does it fit descriptions such as Sassy / Sexy / Surreal / Sensuous / Subversively ritual, and bathed by the Mediterranean ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2014

Some may know that Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, is the capital city of Catalonia – though it’s really, in Catalan, Catalunya – but forget Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) for giving you any more than an architectural montage to emulate that of Manhattan (1979) (or be a precursor to Woody Allen’s love-smitten depiction of Paris at Midnight from 2011…)²


But it probably may help little more to think of the inevitable Gaudí, let alone Juan Gris’ connections or – with the Catalan form of Gris’ adopted name and a birth-right to Barcelona – Joan Miró. Maurice Ravel (French, but with a Basque-Spanish heritage of a birthplace in territory somewhat distant from Catalunya, but likewise where France adjoins Spain), may give us some feel of Spanishness at times, but perhaps the quirky figure who provides a way in to this cinematic tradition is Salvador Dalí.

This blog-posting began with five ‘S’ key-words, and Dalí truly, as the phrase has it, ticks the boxes for all of them – and, with the infamous collaboration with Luis Buñuel in Un Chien Andalou (1928) (not forgetting L'âge d'or (1930)), is rooted in cinema. Dalí may have moved away from what Buñuel became a celebrated master of, but his showmanship and theatricality resembles aspects of film familiar, say, from the great Italian directors, and it is hard to believe that he has not been an inspiration in his home region.


Overview of Cambridge Film Festival's 'Catalan strand' in 2012 and 2013

Looking personally to the 2014 Festival (#CamFF), there is full confidence in Ramon Lamarca that he will have found and curated some powerful and challenging films, no doubt examining the nature of reality, or of the little-appreciated conflict that is The Spanish Civil War (Guerra Civil Española). As well as ending the life of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and providing the substance of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, it not only tore Spain apart (with the help of General Franco’s allies in Germany and Italy), but has laid down a seam that underlies the history of Spain in our postmodern era, and which film-makers in Catalunya have been especially open to explore :

Directors such as Ken Loach, working with screenwriter Jim Allen in Land and Freedom (1995), have brought a British perspective on seeking to fight pro-fascist Nationalist forces, but Jesús Garay’s Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) delves less into the politics and the pointlessness of brother against brother, but rather, and very movingly, into the ‘visceralness’ of what it means to tick down to something that changes individual lives for ever : although Garay is from Santander, not Catalunya, again this is in the very North of Spain.

Set in the civil war like his film, but from the point of view of a landowner with pro-fascist leanings (or, probably more accurately, inherited anti-communist feelings ?), The Forest (El bosc) (2012), through its embodiment of place and with its vivid special effects, evokes another world, another dimension, from the perspective of which professed love and care can be examined, and in and through which a transformational and redemptive influence can operate. Similarly, in a way in the post-war period, and with packed Festival screenings, Black Bread (Pa negre) (2010) hits us right at its close with a boy’s realization of what his true position in life has been.

On another level, and in Venice, we again have finding the truth in The Redemption of The Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013), as Marc (Miquel Quer) tracks down his past, and is seduced and misled by the shapes, shadows and reflections of La Serenissima : so many of these films revolve historical and familial disputes and allegiances in a rich and productive way. In V.O.S. (2009), we have that theme translated into the playful and malleable notion of relation and relationships, in and out of making a film that crosses the barrier between ‘life’ and ‘film’ in a way as inventive and thought-provoking as Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). And, but one might need to read further with the links below to reviews on this blog, The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010) teases apart the layers of reality (not least with its quiet homage to Paris, Texas (1984))…


Here (out of the eleven films shown in 2012 and 2013 - UK denotes UK premiere) are links to this blog’s reviews of most of the films (with @THEAGENTAPSLEY's tag-lines, and additional key-words) :

2012 – Black Bread (Pa Negre) (2010)

A naturalistic, but haunted, story of a child’s perspective on betrayal, sex and anger

Civil war – Childhood – Respect – Reprisal – Poverty – Loyalty


2013 (UK) – Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)

Movingly mixing documentary, acting, and faux-documentary to dig into past pain

Bombs – Barcelona – Dante – Time – Heights – History


2012 – The Body in the Woods (Un Cos Al Bosc) (1996)

An unfolding with turns, twists and unprincipled practices

Sexual orientation – Investigation – Murder – Disguise – Corruption – Desire


2013 (UK) – The Forest (El bosc) (2012)

An account of a civil war through how the hated better-off classes fared

Magical realism – Twisted love – Collectivization – Other worlds – Symbolism – Unreal feast


2012 – The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010)

Finding the truth, when it is well hidden, by intuition and insight

Mental-health stigma – Friendship – Corruption – Blood – Unreality – Amnesia


2013 (UK) – The Redemption of the Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013)

Connectedness and disconnection, reality and illusion, in Venice

Contact – Closeness – Deceit – Truth – Reflection – Ripple


2012 – V.O.S. (2009)

A film within a film – or is one as real as the other ?

Acting – Film-making – Real time – Couples – Attraction – Meta-textuality


2012 – Warsaw Bridge (1990)

The whirl / ennui of yet another publishing event, and what it leads to

Connections – Publishing – Society – Glamour – Politics – Water


End-notes

¹ It had two screenings, at the second of which the film’s director, Óscar Aibar, was in attendance and answered questions.


² For one thing, Penélope Cruz (easily the best part of the film, and whose deserving an Academy Award (for María Elena) was undeniable) and her now husband Javier Bardem (by no means the worst), although Spanish, are not from what (since 1978) has been an Autonomous Community or ’nationality’ within Spain.

For another, according to the trivia of Wikipedia’s web-page for VCB, Allen had funding for a film to be shot in Spain, and so adapted a script that he had written years before, which was set in San Francisco : judge for oneself what Catalan (or even properly Spanish) feel one has from the film – and, more importantly, whether the character of Juan Antonio (Bardem) resembles a convenient stereotype of Mediterranean mores (to drive the plot in a rather Jamesian, ingénues-abroad way)…



If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Fruits of the forest

This is a Festival review of El bosc (The Forest) (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 October

This is a Festival review of El bosc (The Forest) (2012)

A film festival is one of those rare places where you can talk to the person who has programmed films that interest you*, and, in this case, as last year, it was Ramon Lamarca for his Catalan films, of which I saw three (and managed one of those twice, the beautifully filmed and constructed The Redemption of the Fish (2012)), and it, with another, Eyes on the Sky (2008), were in my Festival top five at Cambridge :

The Forest (El Bosc)) (2012) has kept me thinking since, not since I did not have a chance to try a review until now, when memories have faded, and reviews tend to be shorter... In this time, there are antipathies between church-goers and the non-chuch-goers who largely make up the Republican forces, and between those who support the Republic and, those assumed to be Fascists, because they question it (they are conservatives). There is one notable exception, in the form of the man, who turns out to have falsified orders to protect a lone woman and her baby at this dangerous time by keeping a unit based at her property.

Another man, Coixo (Pere Ponce), is in love with her, and has been since childhood, but seeks to win her love by such means as seeking to starve her, although he has, probably for similar reasons, protected her from the worst excesses of the Republican forces. He and her husband Ramon (Àlex Brendemühl) and Dora (Maria Molins), who said that he would stand firm (and then fled), are the main characters in this drama.

It really wants to imply that nothing is as it seems - we do not know why the anti-Fascist forces are delayed so long until later - and Ramon has experience of another time that leads him to see many things differently. Effectively, although we do no not know what it was exactly like for him, he tells us that there are other worlds where conflicts are going on, and he learns humanity from this : that he has, as Dora urges, solidarity with the beings who looked after him.

Whether the strange fruit or alien creatures that we see distort our vision, I do not know (I hope not), but they serve to make another world more real (as I elicited in the Q&A**), and they also question our notion that everything is so clear on either side of a conflict.


End-notes

* I was interested that one character, Coixo, resembled Trotsky (and Dustin Hoffman) : it turned out that one influence that the training from the USSR had had on the Republican forces was to make leaders resemble Trotsky, by giving him as an example.

** In The Q&A, I referenced Diane Keaton and Woody Allen gorging themselves on enormous fruit (in Sleeper (1973)), and asked whether the director had had great fun designing the fruit. He did not answer as such, but said that it had been on a low budget, and that he knew what he had he had been doing when ordering it.


Read here, a review (with spoilers) from a colleague at TAKE ONE, Robbie Griffiths


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Eyes full of tears

This is a Festival review of Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

7 October

This is a Festival review of Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)

Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) is not an overtly flashy film, but – deservedly – it does make big claims on our attention, and on our hearts. As can be seen, it is being shown not because it was made in the last year, but it is a UK premiere, part of the Catalan strand, again curated by Ramon Lamarca after a successful first appearance at the Festival last year, which made many friends.

I have written elsewhere about another Catalan film at the Festival (also a UK premiere), The Redemption of the Fish, which I watched twice, and I would – if possible – gladly have done the same with this film, but it is quality that the films have in common, not their subject-matter.

This one concerns the Spanish Civil War and the power of memory – what is best forgotten about when Italian air forces bombed Barcelona, and what should never be forgotten. One review that I have read (maybe this one) challenges how the film is put together, and its story and pace, but, for me, these are what most attracted me to it, for it uses acted scenes, documentary, and faux-documentary, e.g. to introduce the men who were in the anti-aircraft batteries that ringed the city on a number of eminences.

We see men and women, down in the shelters and tunnels that also served to wait out air-raids, interviewed by the same woman who challenges a visiting professor, apparently a Dante scholar and visiting for a conference, and pesters to get to speak to him – what some mistake for the monotonous course of this film is actually provoking us to ask ourselves (if we have not just read up all about it beforehand*) what is real, what is not, and what remembered, what feigned forgetfulness.

In this, we are as much in a confused state as the main characters (Maria (Gabriela Flores) and Mario (Paolo Ferrari), played with great conviction), who think that they know what is right, and not preconception, until life throws them up in each other’s way. After all that we have seen and heard, the closing scenes, and the beautiful reading that the professor gives from the opening of the Inferno, are painfully touching, speaking for all who have been lost.

For the second time this Festival, I was moved to tears just by that simplicity.


End-notes

* My approach to a film is that it should, for good or ill, stand for itself : if I need to have read the book or play on which it is based, it has failed in its own terms, and, if it cannot speak for itself, it is just images.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Crucifying The King

This is a Festival review of La nit que va morir l'Elvis (The Night Elvis Died) (2010)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 October

This is a Festival review of La nit que va morir l'Elvis (The Night Elvis Died) (2010)

* Contains spoilers *

Forget the ludicrously low rating on www.imdb.com, definitely the weak-point with The Night Elvis Died (2010) is the title*, which would not matter, but, when it comes to people choosing whether to watch film X or Y or Z that are on at a convenient time this evening, they do not pay much attention to detail, and this one just sounds like a documentary about burgers, Gracelands and The King of Rock'n'Roll before anyone gets to read something saying otherwise - so film X or Z will fight it out as to which gets viewed.

Now, I don't say that it's right, but, particularly with a foreign-language film and translating its title into English, something judged dead right, like Holy Motors (2012), which - whatever it is - sounds swish and appealing, will get an audience, whereas this much better film didn't close the festival (in Screen 1), but was in Screen 3 one evening.

The comparison with Motors is not just incidental, as this review may go on to make clear, but Motors is on release, and, when I last noticed, showing twice per day locally, whereas those of us that night with Toni Espinosa for a screening and Q&A were the lucky few to be seeing it at all. Forgetting the investment of money, talent and time in making a film, the purpose of any creative act is for it to be seen.

What, then, is Elvis? Well, in a sort of Hitchcockian way, we have a character (Aureli Mercader, hauntingly played by Blai Llopis) with certain experiences, and we know - as the film goes on, but early on that he has issues with anxiety and that something has happened to me - that he had a breakdown. So his credibility is automatically if not written off, then in doubt, because that goes with the territory, which is often a filmic struggle for the person who had ill-health, to amass enough evidence to overcome the weight of the sceptical standard of proof. Classic Hitchcock, too, he has amnesia about what happened on the crucial night, although he knows the outcome and why that night was significant.

Alongside Hitchcock, though, there is also a feeling of Chinatown, because part of seeking for the answer, the breakthrough, is to visit a woman who might be unfairly treated as if she has dementia, when she seems reasonably coherent. Are people pretending to be mentally ill to protect themselves, have others drugged them to make them unwell for their own protection, or was there a real trauma? The film has us play with all three ideas, and when (as in Spellbound) a visual stimulus unlocks Aureli's memory, there is a psychologically convincing remorse that has him put the blame on himself for a death.

Part of the unfolding, where supernatural elements take over, and Aureli can wander into the behind-the-scenes part of a theatre and emerge from vegetation comprising props into a real wild space, is the working out of that assumed guilt. Aureli is in the theatre at all because the historic amateur passion play that has its home there is at risk, and his amnesia and the forces that threaten the play's existence are bound up together. There is a patchiness in the extent to which these hints at dimensions beyond our habitual ones feature, and they seem to go silent at one point when the machinery of a murder and clearing up after it are under way, but, in the final development, although rather mysteriously and highly symbolically at times, the floodgates open of worlds beyond possibility.

The guilt reaches an obvious conclusion with Elvis, so called because he had played Jesus in the passion play (and so was The King), seen on the cross and Aureli at the foot of it. He asks Elvis to forgive him, and so is literally both beseeching the crucified Christ, as one of the thieves does in one gospel account, and his supposed victim.


Maybe not an easy film to follow, especially in the closing scenes, but there was no doubt that something was being worked out, understanding which might be repaid by a second viewing. Producer Tony Espinosa is to be thanked for coming to the festival with his film, and also the programmer of the Catalan strand (Ramon Lamarca) for inviting him to come. (He did answer questions, but my recollection of that session is not clear enough just now to try to record the main points discussed,although I do recall that, when I asked about the Hitchcock parallels, there had not been any deliberate reference.)


End-notes

* As Elvis is Jesus, calling the film The Night Christ Died might be OK.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here