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24 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :- Pure life, with no additives, 10 February 2008 Author: maurazos from Varna, Bulgaria
It has been a nice surprise for me to see such a wonderful movie and I recognize that I would not have seen it if it had not been prized with three 2008 Goya Awards (including Best Film and Best Director ones). Of course, Spanish media did not talk too much about it because I can imagine they have not any economical or political interest on it. That is the way they do it.But it is a delight that those kind of films are still done in 21st century, so simple, with no music and not dramatic special effects, with unknown but credible and natural actors and actresses. This film is an effective portrait of the Spanish society today with all its problems and all its virtues, with no typical images for tourists nor false features to sell a brilliant and fiction image of a Spain that does not actually exist.I love the calmed atmosphere that wrap the scenes and the usual division of the image in two halves that let the audience have a double perspective of the scene. The static cameras and the frontal shots make me remember Yasujiro Ozu's style, so I like this film even more.Finally, I must say that this is a film which proves that an excellent film can be done with not big amounts of money: an example to be followed.
4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- Truly dreary depressing film with no plot - good for insomniacs, 12 June 2008 Author: lollykins from United Kingdom
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
This is the only film I have walked out of before the end. I suppose I do appreciate the nuances of the double windows but the only poignant scene was when Adela returned to her father's house and one window which once was the buggy with the child was empty. Oh and the supposedly artistic view split where you only ever saw one side of a conversation. If you want to sit and watch people ironing and then watch clothes drying on a line, then this is the film for you. In the film the main character said "Estoy cansada"...I felt like shouting out "Eres cansada...madre mia!" I had intended to watch a comedy with Carmen Maura and but the film had not arrived in the cinema because of a strike in Madrid, the replacement was so wholly inappropriate. I persevered for over 2 hours, but watching the clothes dry on the line for 2 minutes was too much for me to bear. I am a learner of Spanish, but this is definitely not a film to take learners to, it would put them off Spanish films for life! Perhaps if you just want to watch the world go by and watch two miserable families exist, you should go and see this. Or if you wish to recover from insomnia.
2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Scenes from life, a hymn to the quotidian, 26 April 2008 Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California
Rosales chooses to represent the everyday lives of two women in an everyday way. Short scenes, photographed with fixed cameras, sometimes in split screen; a focus on child rearing, an illness, mundane work (a grocery store, an office, a greeter for a convention), ironing clothes, playing cards, chatting about nothing much at dinner, or on a bus. A bus: ah, now there's some excitement. Young Adela (Sonia Almarcha), whose raising a one-year-old boy by herself and moves to Madrid, is on a bus that's blown up by a terrorist bomb. The next time we see her, she's battered-looking, and heads back to the country to see her aging papa. The mother of one of Adela's nice Madrid flat-mates, Ines (Miriam Correa), is Antonia (Petra Martinez), a widow who runs a grocery store, and the subject of the second story thread. Antonia's story is more complicated than Adela's, since she is closely involved also with two other daughters, Nieves (Nuria Mencia) and Helena (Maria Bazan). Nieves has to have an operation for cancer, and the self-centered Helena wants money so she and her husband can buy a second home. Pedro, Adela's ex, also wants to borrow money from her.All this information is conveyed in the little vernacular scenes, with static cameras looking past objects, or several shots side by side on-screen showing the same people in a scene from different angles, and no music or much ambient sound--except that the last section is called "Background Noise.". It's like looking at a box of snapshots and piecing things together. Needless to say the actors are convincing. It's they who make this seem like eavesdropping on real conversations.Money is tight, obviously. No one is doing especially well. The pressures lead Antonia to consider selling her house and moving in with her boyfriend Manolo (Jesus Cracio). Discussions over this cause a lot of tension within the family. Manolo repeatedly tries to calm things down, but without great effect. There are jealousies that must weigh on Antonia, and she is Nieves' chief support in her illness. Meanwhile Adela has to deal with trauma and loss.'Solitary Fragments' won three Spanish Goyas, including Best Film and Best Director. It's everyday-ness and its reference to terrorism as a part of common experience may have impressed Spanish audiences especially, together with the dignity and restraint of the film-making technique. Rosales does a good job of balancing non-mainstream methods with humanistic content. Despite the distancing effects of the universally unmoving cameras, the alternating of two almost-unrelated story-lines, and a style that is low keyed to the extreme, one is drawn into the action through the eavesdropping, fly-on-the-wall viewpoint and one's ordinary curiosity about basic experiences and life choices. If this film doesn't awaken enthusiasm in everyone, it does command respect, and it builds gradually throughout its whole length with an increasingly profound sense of lives unfolding. The actual Spanish title is 'La Soledad,' solitude, and subconsciously one is taught by the visual method, which never cuts back and forth in a conversation, for instance, to see each character as separate, essentially, in life, freestanding and alone.
1 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- A mountain of ironing, 14 February 2009 Author: David Traversa from Spain
I never saw anything as dreadful as this movie in my life. Never, I swear! It looks as done with a few Euro (for the camera rental), and nobody working on it got paid I'm sure. It couldn't possibly be any other way; everything is so static that one could fall asleep in every scene --they are THAT LONG--, the camera remains static for minutes at a time, the characters speak utterly boring lines. The split screen is done with a vengeance to the bitter end of this horrible movie, almost for every scene. One is forced to seat and seat, watching them do household chores like ironing COMPLETELY two T shirts (or something similar), from the beginning: One sleeve, right side (sloooowly), turn it, the other side, turn it; now the other sleeve (sloooowly), turn it, the other side, whoops! don't miss that wrinkle! okay, now the body of the shirt, be careful because it has to look very nice, let's see, first this side, now turn it (sloooowly), the other side..., NOW WE FOLD THE DAMNED THING...(sloooowly), and carefully once it's been folded, we lay it with care inside a basket full of other garments previously ironed and folded...I wanted TO SCREEEEEAM!!!! Let me out of here!! what do I care about these miserable people's problems!! Stupid people, stupid problems, the dialogs are moronic, so are the actors (probably the director's fault). Although..., maybe now that I think about it..., maybe THERE WAS NOT a director..., that's it! for a movie to be this bad, there was not a director!! Almodovar, Dear Almodovar...Where are you?? we need you, please!!
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