|
UNDER THE STARS
BAJO LAS ESTRELLAS
Goya Awards - Best Lead Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay.
Malaga Film Festival 2007: 4 Awards - Best Film, Best Actor, Best Director & Best Novel Script
Director of several internationally acclaimed short films, Félix Viscarret easily makes the transition to features with this offbeat, delicately observed tale that swept the major prizes at last year's Spanish national film festival in Málaga.
Benito Lacunza (Alberto San Juan) is a mediocre trumpet player just making a living when he gets word that his father has died. Back home in rural Navarra, he reconnects with his brother Lalo (Julián Villagrán), a sculptor and former alcoholic who has struggled to get straight. Lalo is planning to marry Nines (Emma Suárez), which Benito is against — until he meets her daughter Ainara (Violeta Rodriguez), an introverted child with whom Benito creates a most unusual friendship.
Viscarret laces his drama with comedy and an edgy quirkiness, elegantly capturing the feeling of small-town life, with its suspicions, jealousies and sense that everyone knows everybody else's business. San Juan is excellent as Benito: just the right combination of big-city
snobbery and barely concealed vulnerability.
Spain. Drama. 108 minutes. 2007 (18+)
Director: Félix Viscarret
With: Alberto San Juan, Emma Suárez,
Julián Villagrán, Violeta Rodríguez
 |
