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Spanish
Language Films
BROWSE SPANISH FILMS: Contemporary Spanish films: ALPHABETICAL
INDEX - 1 -
2 - 3 - 4
- 5 - 6
- 7 | New
releases | Spanish-language film collections
| Spanish & Latin American film directors
| Spanish & Latin American actors &
actresses | Books about Spanish
language cinema
All About My Mother / Todo sobre mi madre |
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Drama / Comedy (1999)
Spain
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes |
Review: After her son is killed
in an accident, Manuela (Cecilia Roth) leaves Madrid for her old
haunts in Barcelona. She reconnects with an old friend, a pre-op
transsexual prostitute named La Agrado (Antonia San Juan), who
introduces her to Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young nun who
turns out to be pregnant. Meanwhile, Manuela becomes a personal
assistant for Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes), an actress currently
playing Blanche DuBois in a production of A
Streetcar Named Desire. All
About My Mother traces the delicate web of friendship
and loss that binds these women together. The movie is dedicated
to the actresses of the world, so it's not surprising that all
the performances are superb. Roth in particular anchors All
About My Mother with compassion and generosity. But fans
of writer-director Pedro Almodóvar needn't fret--as always,
Almodóvar's work undermines conventional notions of sexual
identity and embraces all human possibilities with bright colors
and melodramatic plotting. However, All
About My Mother approaches its twists and turns with a
broader emotional scope than most of Almodóvar's work;
even the more extravagant aspects of the story are presented quietly,
to allow the sadness of life to be as present as the irrepressible
vitality of the characters. Almodóvar embraces pettiness,
jealousy, and grief as much as kindness, courage, and outrageousness,
and the movie is the richer for it.
Review by Bret Fetzer
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Butterfly / La lengua de las mariposas |
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Drama (1999)
Spain
Director: José Luis Cuerda
Starring: Fernando Fernán Gómez, Manuel Lozano |
From the back cover: Acclaimed
by critics and featuring legendary star Fernando Fernan Gomez
(All
About My Mother), Butterfly
is a heartwarming tale about a young boy growing up in a small
Spanish town. Moncho is timid and fearful as he starts school
for the first time. But with the nuturing guidance of his kind
and devoted teacher, Don Gregorio (Fernán Gómez),
a world of possibilities begins to open up for young Moncho. As
the school year comes to a close, however, civil war begins sweeping
across the country, forcing the boy's family and community to
choose between the fight for freedom and the threat of persecution!
An amazing story of family and friendship during a time of extreme
conflict--you're sure to enjoy this magical motion picture.
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Herod's Law / La ley de Herodes |
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Comedy / Crime (1999)
Mexico
Director: Luis Estrada
Starring: Damián Alcázar, Pedro Armendáriz
Jr. |
Review: Luis Estrada
directs this groundbreaking and extremely controversial satire
about Mexico's long-ruling political party, the PRI. Set in the
late 1940s in the remote, thoroughly backwards village of San
Pedro de los Saguaros, the film focuses on Vargas (Damian Alcazar),
a petty politician who had the dubious honor of being appointed
town mayor after his predecessor was decapitated for corruption
by an angry mob. At first, he tries to balance the books and to
bring the 20th century to the backwaters. When he is visited by
slick PRI politico Lopez (Pedro Armendariz), however, he learns
the officially sanctioned way of running the town: at gunpoint
while pilfering the bank vaults. Soon Vargas becomes a power-mad
despot, more than willing to steal or kill to further his goals.
Though his PRI bosses try to reign him in, the lynch mob soon
appears to be the inevitable end of Vargas' political career.
The first film to criticize the PRI by name, Estrada's bitter
farce savages the ruling party, the church and U.S. intervention.
Cult director Alex Cox plays a small role as a seedy gringo.
Review by Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
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Sex, Shame & Tears / Sexo, pudor y lágrimas |
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Comedy / Drama (1999)
Mexico
Director: Antonio Serrano
Starring: Demián Bichir, Mónica Dionne |
Synopsis: The romantic
foibles of two young couples in Mexico -- whose professional success
has not led to personal satisfaction -- forms the basis of this
comedy with serious undertones. Carlos (Victor Hugo Martin) is
a student of new age spirituality, while his wife Ana (Susana
Zabaleta) is a good bit more interested in the pleasures of the
flesh, leading to no small amount of conflict. Tensions increase
when Tomas (Demián Bichir), an old friend of the couple
and Ana's former lover, comes to pay an extended visit. Elsewhere
in the neighborhood, Andrea (Cecilia Suarez) is angry with her
husband Miguel (Jorge Salinas), who doesn't appear to put much
stock in monogamy, and she's even more annoyed when he announces
that his former girlfriend Maria (Monica Dionne), who has just
left her husband, will be their house guest for a while. After
a great deal of arguing and soul searching, a temporary agreement
is reached between the two couples and their friends -- the men
will stay in one apartment while the women will stay in another
until cooler heads prevail. Sexo,
Pudor Y Lagrimas/Sex,
Shame and Tears was written and directed by Antonio Serrano,
who adapted his own successful stage play.
Review by Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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Gimme the Power / Todo el poder |
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Comedy / Drama (1999)
Mexico
Director: Fernando Sariñana
Starring: Demián Bichir, Cecilia Suárez |
Synopsis: Directed by Fernando
Sariñana, Todo
el poder centers around the politics and corruption that
shroud the Mexican police system. Featuring Demián Bichir
as Gabriel, a filmmaker whose career has left him assaulted and
robbed in broad daylight more times than he cares to remember,
the film itself was inspired by Sariñana's personal experience
with urban crime oftentimes perpetrated by the police themselves.
Review by Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
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The Grandfather / El abuelo |
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Drama (1998)
Spain
Director: José Luis Garci
Starring: Fernando Fernán Gómez, Rafael Alonso |
Description: Nominated for an
Academy Award(R) as Best Foreign Language Film, The
Grandfather is a deeply compelling tale of love, honor,
and secrecy. When news of his son's death returns proud, old Count
Albrit home to Spain after years abroad, he's pleased to meet
his two charming young granddaughters. But he also carries the
burden of a newly discovered family secret: one of the girls is
not his son's daughter ... and therefore not his true heir! Starring
original cast members from the Oscar(R)-winning Spanish film sensation
All
About My Mother -- you'll be inescapably drawn into this
powerful story as the determined Count sets out to discover which
grannddaughter is worthy of his love and name!
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Tango / Tango, no me dejes nunca
|
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Drama / Musical (1998)
Spain / Argentina
Director: Carlos Saura
Starring: Miguel Ángel Solá, Cecilia Narova |
From the back cover:
Flamboyant. Colorful. Sensual. This is the seductive world of
the Tango,
stunningly brought to life by acclaimed director Carlos Saura
(Flamenco),
Grammy-winning composer Lalo Schifrin (TV's "Mission: Impossible")
and Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Set against
the backdrop of a director's passionate love affair with his art
and the beautiful young woman who captures his heart, Tango
is "a mesmerizing experience, a smoky lush blend of muted
light and color, of intoxicating dance and the richest tango music
you could ever imagine." (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times).
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Open Your Eyes / Abre los ojos |
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Drama / Romance (1997)
Spain
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Starring: Eduardo Noriega (II), Penélope Cruz |
Review: Imagine
if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost
entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made
a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark
City, eXistenZ,
The
Thirteenth Floor, The
Truman Show, and Total
Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's
remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas
over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility.
This film rewards multiple viewings, pushing the viewer toward
one perception of reality, then switching to another until reality
itself is called into question. Melodrama, love story, and psychological
thriller combine with a dash of science fiction, forming a plot
that is both disorienting and deceptively precise.
Set in Madrid, the story defies description, but this much can
be revealed: young, handsome Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is vain,
rich, charming, and--following a botched suicide-murder scheme
by a jilted lover--horribly disfigured. He'd fallen in love with
Sofia (Penélope Cruz) but is now an embittered husk of
his former self, stuck in a "psychiatric penitentiary"
on a murder charge and hiding behind an expressionless mask. His
reality has crumbled, but as the film's agenda is gradually revealed,
we realize that there are other factors in play. Exposing that
agenda would be a criminal offense against those who haven't seen
the film; suffice it to say that Open
Your Eyes takes you into the twilight zone and beyond,
and does so cleverly enough to prompt Tom Cruise to produce and
star in an English-language remake, Vanilla
Sky. The 2001 remake, directed by Cameron Crowe, costars
Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, who reprises her original
role.
Review by Jeff Shannon
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Live Flesh / Carne trémula
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Drama / Romance (1997)
Spain
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Javier Bardem, Francesca Neri |
Review: The second
film in the "mature phase" of Pedro Almodovar's career,
which began with La
Flor de Mi Secreto two years earlier, Carne
Tremula borrows chunks of its ornate plot from Ruth Rendell's
novel Live
Flesh. The film's political subtext and messy humanity,
however, bear the distinctive stamp of its celebrated director.
A deeply felt exploration of the tension between destiny and chance,
human will and involuntary longing, Carne
Tremula plays a delicate juggling act with competing subplots
that slowly reveal their intimate connections. Unlike Paul Thomas
Anderson's similarly themed but deeply flawed Magnolia,
Almodovar's film zeroes in on its ideas subtly and precisely.
The closest the director gets to his well-known affinity for garish
excess and picturesque debilities is a few minutes of the haunted,
haunting Francesca Neri in a fright wig, and several straight-faced
scenes of stand-up guy Javier Bardem playing wheelchair basketball.
Elsewhere, it's all tightly coiled passion and darkly libidinous
will-to-power -- an urgent directive to get on with life. American
audiences might not grasp all the levels of Almodovar's allegory
about the legacy of Franco's reign, but most everyone should recognize
the contrary passions that propel his characters to desperate
acts and unlikely redemptions. Flawlessly acted by Bardem, Neri,
Liberto Rabal, and Angela Molina, Carne
Tremula offers a darker counterpoint to the tragicomic
shadings of 1999's Todo
Sobre Mi Madre.
Review by Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
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Who the Hell is Juliette? / ¿Quién diablos es Juliette? |
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Documentary (1997)
Mexico
Director: Carlos Marcovich
Starring: Yuliet Ortega, Fabiola Quiroz |
Review: Yuliet
Ortega is a 16-year-old Cubana who lives in a rough, rundown neighborhood
in Havana; Fabiola Quiroz is a successful Mexican model who divides
her time between music videos in Latin America and fashion shoots
in New York City. They have three things in common: startling
green eyes, an obsession with their absent fathers, and the passionate
interest of filmmaker Carlos Marcovich, who has intertwined their
stories into a lively, evocative mix of fact and fiction titled
Who
the Hell Is Juliette?
Marcovich plays Ortega's great, bursting energy and barking laugh
against Quiroz's introspection and melancholy. If he's making
a point about differences in national characters, it's nicely
undersold and flows without a trace of editorializing. Their difference
is like that of the mountains and the sea, of stony self-sufficiency
and bubbling openness.
Both women have significant ties to North America. Quiroz's mother
traces her daughter's green eyes to her long-vanished father,
a Canadian archeologist on a dig in Michoacan. Ortega's father,
who abandoned his family during the Mariela boatlift, turns out
to be an electrician living in New Jersey. This is a fine example
of what happens when a filmmaker follows the logic of a subject
that intrigues him rather than conforms to a preset script. Who
the Hell Is Juliet? seems to be discovering itself as
it goes along, just like its two appealing heroines.
Review by Dave Kehr
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