Tag: spain

The Baztan Trilogy

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The Baztan trilogy consists of three movies, based on the novels by Dolores Redondo. The setting for these is a small area in the Basque country of Spain, not far from the border with France. Much like the small-town English villages such as Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, or Death in Paradise‘s Honoré, the murder rate in this charming and picturesque area appears to rival that of a South American war-zone. I guess you can describe the series as Español negro, being a Mediterranean-based version of Nordic noir. Like those, you have a detective with a troubled past, a history that frequently seeps into her current life, They are investigating crimes resulting from what’s unquestionably the darker side of human nature, and the results are uncomfortably close to home.

In this trilogy, the heroine is Amaia Salazar, a former resident of the region who left under circumstances best described as murky. She joined the police force, rising through the ranks and going through a successful secondment to the FBI, where she distinguished herself. Amaia is now back in Spain, with her American artist husband, James. But, as ever in this kind of thing, the pull of her past is strong. She finds herself coming back to the Baztan region in which she grew up. There, the ghosts of history are lurking and ready to pose a challenge – perhaps equal to that of solving the brutal murders which are the reason for her return.

The trilogy includes the books El guardián invisible (The Invisible Guardian), Legado en los huesos (The Legacy of the Bones) and Ofrenda a la tormenta (Offering to the Storm). From 2017 through 2020, the books were made into three movies by Atresmedia Cine and its partners. Five years after the last of the books was published, Redondo wrote a prequel, La cara norte del corazón (The North Face of the Heart), describing Amaia’s youth and her time with the FBI in America. All four novels were optioned to Heyday Films for American adaptations in October 2021, but there has been almost no news since the original announcement. Still, with the Spanish movies all available on Netflix, the need for any English-language versions is questionable in my opinion. Such things rarely improve on, or even equal, the originals.

Hence, below you’ll find reviews of the three Spanish movies in order. Note: I haven’t read the books, so there will be no further discussion of them, or comparison to the films.

The Invisible Guardian

★★★½
“It’s never sunny in Baztan.”

I’ve traveled a fair bit around Spain and Mediterranean Europe in my time, and the weather was never as unremittingly grim as its depicted here. Things seem to unfold in a permanent downpour. Seriously: Chris and I pretty much were turning it into a drinking game by the end: take a swig every time a scene takes place in the rain. Only concern for the health of our livers prevented us. Googling tells me Baztan is fairly wet: around 55 inches a year. But it felt like most of that arrived during the 129 minute running-time of this film. I suspect David Fincher and Se7en have a lot to answer for, with rain = dark and foreboding atmosphere.

There’s certainly no shortage of that here, even setting meteorological considerations aside. It begins with the discovery of a young girl’s corpse by a river, stripped naked except for a local cake placed on her crotch. Pamplona detective Amaia Salazar (Etura) makes the connection to a previous murder and is sent to Baztan to take over the case. It’s the town where she grew up, and she still has family there. Though relations are still strained with her sister Flora (Mínguez), who runs a bakery in the town. She feels Amaia abandoned the family by “running off” to the United States. It’s not long before we discover their mother had issues, physically abusing Amaia as a child.

However, the main focus is the murders, with further victims turning up, all young girls whose bodies are posed in the same, ritualistic way. The investigation reveals these may be the latest in a series of killings going back fourteen years, which appear to be some kind of moral crusade by the perpetrator. Amaia gets into trouble with her colleagues, because one of the victims was having an affair with her brother-in-law, and she also conceals evidence connecting Flora’s bakery to the cake. She ends up being replaced on the case by Montés (Orella). If you think that’s going to stop Amaia, you clearly haven’t seen enough of this genre.

It does feel very much like the film could be relocated to the Scandinavian forests with very little trouble. There is some specifically local colour in the form of the “Basajaun”, a legendary – or perhaps not – creature, reputed to roam the woods. I suspect its going to play a larger part in the subsequent movies: while this does tidy up the main case, there are a number of loose ends, such as a cave containing a lot more remains. Etura does a good job of handling both the personal drama and the police elements: you may not agree with some of the choices, yet you can see why she made them. Amaia has been through hell, and that she still made something of her life is an admirable trait. A solid enough opening, which even lured Chris off her phone.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Elvira Mínguez, Carlos Librado “Nene”, Francesc Orella

The Legacy of the Bones

★★★★
“Skeletons in the closet”

We jump ahead about a year for the second installment. Amaia Salazar (Etura) has now had the baby she announced she was expecting during the first film, and is adjusting to the need for balance between her career and motherhood, with her husband, James. After completing her maternity leave, she returns to work, and is put on a case of church desecration with cult undertones, at the request of the enigmatic Fr. Sarasola (Arias). This is tied to the Cagots, a historically persecuted group native to the region. Simultaneously, there is an ongoing string of murderers committing suicide, each leaving behind a one-word message: “Tartalo”. It’s a reference to a baby-eating giant from Basque mythology, and seems to be linked to the cave of remains found in the previous film.

Both cases take a deeply-personal turn, reflecting the family of Amaia’s long-standing association with the area. When tested for DNA, the bones left on the church altar are a match for her genetics, and her abusive mother Rosario (Sánchez), now kept in a psychiatric facility, scrawls “Taratalo” on the floor of the room in blood, after attacking an orderly.  Amaia is forced to uncover some very unpleasant truths about the history of her family – and, indeed, the way the region in general dealt with children perceived as unwanted or problematic. Her newborn son becomes part of the scenario as it unfolds, pushing the heroine close to the edge, as she picks her way towards solving the crimes of both the past and present.

This goes into some thoroughly dark places, building on the heavy atmosphere set up in the previous movie. For example, we already knew that Rosario is dangerous, and a patently unfit mother. But what we see her do in this film, goes beyond the mere abuse we previously saw. It’s fortunate that Amaia has a strong support network elsewhere in her family, such as Aunt Tía (Aixpuru), who can offer advice and assistance to help keep her niece on the relatively straight and narrow. To be honest, the revelations here would shake anyone to their core, and it’s testament to the heroine’s strength of character, that she is still able to function as a police detective, while the foundations of her life are being pulled out from under her.

The script does a very good job of keeping the multiple plot-threads functioning, moving each forward in turn, as information regarding the situation is discovered. While avoiding spoilers, it is a little hard to believe Amaia would be so in the dark about the situation in regard to her own family: you’d think Tia might have said something? However, there is an almost relentless grimness of tone here – and a lot more rain as well, with a flooded town being integral to the plot – which pulled me in with the inevitability of a rip tide. It might just about work as a standalone entity, yet you will certainly get more out of this, if you’ve seen the first movie and know where it’s coming from.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Itziar Aizpuru, Imanol Arias, Susi Sánchez

Offering to the Storm

★★
“Gale force disappointment.”

Oh, dear. I think it’s probably been a very long while since I’ve been so underwhelmed by the finale of a trilogy. All the pieces were in place, after the first two entries, for a grandstand finish to the series. But the script basically fumbles things in every conceivable way, pushing to the front elements that you really don’t care about, while all but discarding things that seemed of crucial importance. There is an effort to tie everything together, with the various crimes from its predecessors being linked into an occult conspiracy in which members of a Satanic circle sacrifice baby girls, and receive worldly power in exchange. This aspect is okay, Amaia having to go up against a group whose power is embedded at the highest levels of local society. The creepiest element is perhaps that the sacrifices seem to work, though nobody seems too bothered about this. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t gel well with the elements carried forward from the first two movies, and a lot of the elements that should be shocking or disturbing simple are not. The worst example is the identity of the cult’s “inside man”, which is so painfully obvious, you may find yourself yelling at the screen, and Amaia as she ploughs on with her investigation, completely oblivious to the threat. Little less blatant is the plot thread where husband James (Northover) is going back to America because his father is ill. We’ve seen enough in this genre to know that there is no possible way Amaia is going to end up accompanying him, regardless of how much she promises she will. The film seems convinced it is the first ever to use this device, to demonstrate how its dedicated, troubled detective has her priorities skewed. 

This somewhat ties into the whole fidelity subplot, which did nothing except make us (Chris especially) lose empathy for the lead character. In this installment, Amaia just does not seem as “heroic” as previously. I get that the pressure on her is building. But I would have preferred it to lean into the saying, “Hard times breed strong women.” There’s just too many occasions on which she breaks down and starts sobbing instead. Some of it may be justified: there’s the uncertainty about the fate of her mother, for example, who was last seen plunging into a flood-swollen mountain river. This is resolved. In about the least satisfactory way possible. At least it is addressed. Remember the “Basajaun”? Because the makers here clearly did not.

At 139 minutes, this is the longest of the trilogy, and you’ll be forgiven if you think it feels that way too. Rather than being led by the film, all too often we found ourselves ahead of it, and then having to wait for the plot and characters to catch up with what we had already figured out. We also ended up rolling our eyes heavily at some of the plot developments, such as the mother of a sacrificed baby acquiring some dynamite and using it to blow open the vault where her child is buried. Wait, what? It’s a shame, that after two films which did so much right, the third does goes wrong in so many different ways.

Dir: Fernando González Molina
Star: Marta Etura, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Carlos Librado “Nene”, Benn Northover

Nowhere

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★★★
“Survival of the fittest.”

One of the shows we enjoy watching here is Alone, in which ten contestants are dropped off in a hostile location – typically chilly – with limited resources. The last one left standing wins $500,000. It’s a simple concept, yet endlessly fascinating. We sit on our comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on the failing of the competitors. Especially so when they are hoist by their own stupidity, such as losing their means of starting a fire. This feels not dissimilar, except rather than a survival expert, it’s a woman who finds herself thrown into utterly inhospitable circumstances, and forced to make do by any means necessary – not just for her own survival, but that of her new-born child.

The woman is the heavily pregnant Mia (Castillo), who is fleeing an uncertain present in Spain, hoping to get to Ireland, with her husband Nico (Novas). The route is supposed to involve them being sent in shipping containers along with other refugees, but almost from the off, things go wrong. Mia is separated from Nico; the rest of the occupants are gunned down; and then, just when Mia is on her way, the container is washed off the ship in a storm, leaving her afloat in the middle of the ocean. It’s leaking badly – bullet holes will do this – and even after she has addressed that immediate problem, she has to figure out how to survive, with only the contents of the container. Oh, and then she gives birth.

It is, of course, a very contrived set of circumstances, with the container offering a variety of potentially useful items, rather than being, say, entirely full of agricultural machinery. Similarly, her cell-phone has remarkable battery life and service coverage, though I have read a suggestion the calls she received were actually hallucinations. That might be a shame, as one of them certainly represents the film’s dramatic peak, an utterly heart-rending conversation. It was the point where I suddenly realized I had become invested in Mia’s fate, and cared. It came as a bit of a surprise, and is testament to a good performance from Castillo. Not least because for much of the time, she has nobody to act against except a new-born baby.

The scripting is less effective. As well as the convenience mentioned, the whole opening half-hour proves almost irrelevant. It sets up a scenario where resources have become so short, the government is killing off unproductive members of its own society. Let’s just say: I have questions, yet it serves no purpose in the movie, except to get Mia into her crate. Things improve once it does, and the film becomes a straight survival story, rather than trying to make (I presume) some kind of social point about… something. Not that this stopped me from sitting on my comfortable couch, eating Doritos and passing comment on Mia’s attempts to fish. If only she’d watched Alone, she’d have managed much better…

Dir: Albert Pintó
Star: Anna Castillo, Tamar Novas, Tony Corvillo, Mariam Torres

Assassin’s Target

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★★
“Tolerable only in small doses.”

There’s an interesting tweak to the situation here. While it is the usual “hitwoman agrees to go on one last mission” plotline, Rosa (Gala) is an assassin who has adopted poison as her weapon of choice. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this, and it’s interesting because women are, in reality, considerably more likely to kill in that way [Per the Washington Post, “Women are seven times as likely as men to choose poison as their murder weapon”] Her choice dates back to Rosa’s childhood, when she killed her abusive father and complicit mother with belladonna berries from their own garden, and has gone on to choose this as a career, working for… Well, it’s a bit vague. Some kind of British intelligence group, I think, with her boss being Henry Crowford  (Giblin).

Rosa’s latest mission takes her to Barcelona, where someone recently hijacked all the TV channels, to broadcast a message of peace and love. Needless to say, the authorities aren’t having that, so send Rosa – who is keen to retire – to track down and eliminate this threat to the established order. Helping her is Will Gray (Vinnicombe), a former army intelligence officer turned fixer. But as Rosa tries to get closer to the pirate of the high frequencies, things get considerably murkier, as it appears that he is another spook, supposedly killed in action. Meanwhile, Crowford’s boss (Charles) is getting increasingly antsy about her lack of progress, and sends another operative after her, to tie up the loose end she increasingly appears to represent.

Retitled from The Vibe, for entirely understandable commercial reasons, this is also known as – and you’ll be forgiven a derisive snort at this – Impossible Mission. But I’m going by the title under which I saw the movie on Amazon Prime. It starts promisingly enough, and does a good job of capturing the complex and paranoid worlds of both intelligence activities and conspiracy theorists, in which no-one can be trusted. However, it has no clue what to do with its concepts, and gets increasingly bogged down in far too much chit-chat. Not helping matters here, is the number of people, led by Gala, who are clearly not speaking their mother tongue, e.g. pronouncing “arsenic” as “ar-SEN-ic”.

Rosa does very little in the way of spycraft, and doesn’t put her toxic talents to any use in pursuit of her target. Certainly, the cover is entirely inaccurate, since I don’t recall her even picking up a gun. By the end, writer-director Gambino has painted himself into such a corner, there’s apparently no way to escape, and the film simply ends, without any of the major topics, least of all Rosa’s status, achieving resolution. I did keep watching, though must confess this was partly due to the over-enthusiastic closed captioning (which I turned on, since I was treadmilling at the time, and hence wheezing loudly). It describes the soundtrack in terms including “vexed music”, “maleficent music” and, my personal favourite, “dreadful music”. That this was the most consistent source of entertainment throughout, tells you everything you need to know.

Dir: Gilles Gambino
Star: Jimena Gala, Ben Vinnicombe, James Giblin, Leslie Charles
a.k.a. The Vibe

Locked Up (TV)

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★★★
“Back behind bars.”

While this Spanish series started off back in 2015, it perhaps suffers through not having been watched until recently – in the wake of shows like Wentworth and The Yard. There are too many elements which left me feeling “Hang on: haven’t I seen that somewhere before?” For instance, the thread where a motherly inmate gets Alzheimer’s and pleads with her cell-mates to kill her before it destroys her mind entirely? Liz Birdsworth, in seasons six and seven of Wentworth. So, I guess your opinion on this may vary, depending on your familiarity with the genre. Also like Wentworth, the main protagonist is someone who is not a hardened criminal – but ends up becoming one, over the course of the show. 

In this case, that is Macarena Ferreiro (Civantos). She gets seven years after becoming the patsy for her boss’s fraud. She stumbles across the location of a robbery haul, which brings her into conflict with… Well, just about everyone, but the key persona is Zulema Zahir (Lobato), the top dog of the prison. The five seasons (40 episodes in total) revolve around their love-hate relationship, though as usual, there are a good number of side stories and supporting characters, on both sides of the bars. Again, some of these may feel rather familiar, with the show going through the usual tropes of power struggles, warders good and bad, and criminal activities. It’s solid enough (and offers more nudity than the other shows, if that’s of interest!), just all too familiar at this point.

The show was originally cancelled after the second series, but after a significant pause was then revived for a third and fourth season. That delay required significant cast changes, due to the cast having moved on – Civantos’s other commitments meant Macarena became a secondary character. They also had to “transfer” to a new prison, as their existing sets had been taken over by another show (Money Heist, also on Netflix). But the real weirdness begins after the end of Season 4, which has an air of absolute finality to it. But, wait! There’s more! For Vis a vis: El oasis, followed. Set a decade later, Macarena and Zulema have teamed up, to become an armed robbery duo. 

They recruit some of their old pals to pull off the dreaded ‘one last heist’, robbing the wedding of a cartel boss’s daughter. Needless to say, it goes about as well as ‘one last heists’ always do. Initially, it feels a bit like an unwanted supplement. But it ends up as probably the most relevant to this site, with the women holed up in a motel, in the middle of the desert, and under siege by the boss’s army. By going outside the prison walls, this offers most scope for genuine invention, and it’s likely why I felt this to be the strongest season. I just wish I hadn’t had to go through four series of generic prison drama to reach it.

Created by:  Iván Escobar, Esther Martínez Lobato, Álex Pina, Daniel Écija
Star: Maggie Civantos, Najwa Nimri, Carlos Hipólito, Roberto Enríquez
a.k.a. Vis A Vis (Face to Face)

Paradise Hills

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★★★½
“A small-scale beauty.”

And there I was, thinking Maleficent: Mistress of Evil would be the prettiest picture I saw in all of 2020. There’s a new champion, and whoever assembled the look of this one should have been honoured at the Oscars. Shot in Barcelona and the Canary Islands, it beats Maleficent by almost entirely avoiding CGI, in lieu of stunning locations such as the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó: “a mazelike estate constructed from cement that features nine connected structures and 300 arches.” That quote comes from a feature in Architecture Digest, which is not something every film gets, shall we say. And it deserves one, for the entirety of this is a 95-minute coffee-table book. Even when the plot stumbles, you can wallow in a remarkable visual style, achieved for the relative pittance of $10 million.

That plot concerns Uma (Roberts), who has just refused the hand in marriage of the young man chosen by her family. She is sent off to the titular establishment, on a remote island, to be “re-educated” into a more pliable form, under the guidance of The Duchess (Jovovich). Uma meets others going through the same treatment for various reasons, but plots to escape, with the help of the one she truly loves. Only for this to be derailed when the true nature of the “re-education” is revealed, explaining why Paradise Hills has a 100% success rate with its patients, despite a very low-key approach, mostly consisting of yoga. Yet, it turns out to be an method which can perhaps be leveraged against those who seek to control Uma.

As a modern-day fairy-tale, it works quite nicely, driven particularly by the visual style which feels like the dream of a mad interior designer. However, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and occasionally descends into the painfully obvious, such as The Duchess clipping thorns off roses. ‘Cos the roses represent the young women, being shorn of their individuality and essence, y’see? Yeah, I rolled my eyes a bit at that. You also wonder why they bother with flashy stuff like cranking Uma up to the roof on a carousel pony, in order to show her holograms of her intended. It seems entirely unnecessary, given the… considerably more physical, shall we say, nature of Paradise Hills’ true solution.

But it’s fun to watch Jovovich in a role which doesn’t require her to kick ass – except, perhaps of the psychological kind. For she still exudes menace, even when being extremely polite, or perhaps due to this. Managing to make “You’re just a prickly little pear” into a dire threat is no small feat. While Roberts is decent enough, the rest of the supporting cast of inmates (González, Macdonald and the ever-clunkily named Awkwafina) seem largely redundant. We’re never given much reason to care about their characters, and I found the film achieved greater impact when it stayed focused on Uma. But given the beauty on display, I’m largely prepared to forgive its other flaws.

Dir: Alice Waddington
Star: Emma Roberts, Milla Jovovich, Eiza González, Danielle Macdonald

Sólo quiero caminar

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★★
“Oceano’s quatro”

We watched this Spanish film, by coincidence, on the same night as Ocean’s 8, and the Hispanic entry came off as a poor imitation, even though it was made a decade earlier. A four-woman gang’s attempt to steal from Russian mobsters in Spain falls short, though only a single member of the crew is arrested. One of those who escape, Ana, marries Mexican drug-lord Felix (Yazpik), only to discover over the ensuing months, he’s an utterly abusive bastard. After she is pushed out of a car at high-speed, ending up in hospital, the other three, including her sister Aurora (Gil), the one who was caught, decided to take revenge on Felix. The plan is to start by stealing first his data then move on to his money, the loss of which will cause his new Korean partners to kill him. However, his right-hand man, Gabriel (Luna), begins to suspect the women – yet his qualms about Felix’s increasingly brutal ways help lead to increasingly split loyalties.

This isn’t as good as the above synopsis – or the German DVD sleeve on the right! – might make it sound. Instead, it’s a two hour-plus mess, with far too many scenes serving purposes that are either poorly explained or entirely non-existent. Aurora’s time in prison, for example, is virtually irrelevant, except for another scene showing what bastards men are [she is eventually released thanks to the provision of sexual favours to a corrupt judge; one of the themes here seems to be that men are degenerate sleazeballs]. And when the heist goes into motion, there’s absolutely no sense of structure, which would allow the audience to follow along. Why is that tunnel being dug? Does anyone know what’s going on? And then there are the “Koreans”, who are very clearly speaking Chinese. Not sure if this was casual racism, or just extremely sloppy film-making.

Despite the above critical evisceration, it’s not entirely without merit. There’s something of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese feel to this, not least in the conspicuous use of music to punctuate proceedings. That includes both usual Hispanic entries like Los Lobos, to entirely unexpected content, such as Patti Smith’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. Those inspirations are also reflected in Yanes’s unstinting eye for violence. The scene where Felix takes a hammer to the hands of a victim is nasty – yet necessary, bringing home beyond any shadow of doubt how evil he is. When things are in motion, Yanes seems to have a decent handle on how to shoot and edit things, and I liked most of the performances here as well, from a fairly well-known cast. It’s just a shame the script seems to consist of pages torn from a better movie, thrown up into the air and placed in random order. The struggle simply to follow what was happening, entirely sucked the life out of my initial enthusiasm for this.

Dir: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Star: Victoria Abril, Ariadna Gil, José María Yazpik, Diego Luna
a.k.a. Just Walking or Walking Vengeance

Hundra

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★★★
“Blonde barbarians have more fun.”

hundraDirector Cimber seems always to have had an interest in the action-heroine genre, having previously directed Lady Cocoa, he’d go on to do Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold , also starring Landon, and work on Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. But this was likely his best work, a rather inspired Conan knock-off, which both predates and is significantly better than Red Sonja.

The titular heroine (Landon) is left virtually the last of her all-female tribe, after everyone else is slaughtered while she’s out hunting or something. Initially intent on getting revenge, the tribal shaman, Chrysula, then insists Hundra’s more important task is to find a man appropriate to start the job of repopulating them. But our barbarian queen quickly finds out that most men are, indeed, dicks, and not in the sense she hoped either. The remainder of the film is mostly about the task of trying to locate someone worthy of being the father of her child, while also bringing a feminist consciousness to other women, who tend not to be anywhere near as liberated as Hundra.

It certainly starts impressively, with both the massacre and the resulting revenge-based chase (in which the hunters become the hunted), being well-staged and brutally effective. Landon could probably do with some more muscles, particularly in her arms; when she’s clashing blades with guys twice her size, it isn’t entirely convincing, but she largely makes up for that with a fierce personality. After that barn-storming start, the pace does slacken considerably in the middle too, as Hundra goes into “hormonal clock overtime” mode, eventually deciding that Pateray (Oliveros) has the seed worthy of her loins. However, he insists she must first learn how to be a lady, a rather odd concept for the genre – what is this, My Fair Barbarian? However, a strong score from legendary composer Ennio Morricone helps things tick over until the action quotient ramps up again in time for Hundra to pop out the necessary rug-rat and pick up her sword once more.

I believe the producers purchased some of the left-over costumes and props from Conan, which makes sense since the story here is also largely recycling its plot as well. Admittedly, it does so with a significantly enhanced feminist agenda, although this consists as much of portraying men as nothing but mindless boors as anything uplifting. Landon apparently did almost all her own action, and has to be commended for that; credit also Hundra’s dog, who succeeds in out-acting and being more sympathetic than most of the men present. You’ll believe a canine can ride a horse… While I’d be hard-pushed to claim this is great overall, and the inconsistency of tone is occasionally very jarring, there are enough aspects and elements which work, to make this an interesting, generally entertaining watch.

Dir: Matt Cimber
Star: Laurene Landon, John Ghaffari, Marisa Casel, Ramiro Oliveros

Hundra comic
Hundra comic
Hundra comic
Hundra comic
Hundra comic
Hundra comic

Sweet Home

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★★★½
“Hogar, dulce hogar…”

sweethomeA straightforward yet effective cross between a slasher film and Die Hard, sees Alicia (Garcia-Jonsson) plan a birthday dinner for her boyfriend, Simon (Sevilla) in an almost deserted apartment building. However, she stumbles into a plot to evict the last remaining tenant… in a body-bag. Trapped inside the locked tenement, the young couple become the target, first for the evictors, and then their boss, the Liquidator (Tarrida), as they seek to cover the tracks of their murderous work.

Three sentences, and that’s basically the entirety of the plot covered, since most of the film is an extended stalk ‘n’ slash, with Alicia, in particular, seeking a way out. It’s absolutely her story, because Simon is wounded relatively early in proceedings, and ends up close to a non-factor in proceedings – for one reason or another. Even though there’s a sense of Garcia-Jonsson acting mostly in her third language (she was born in Sweden, most of her career has been in Spain, yet her dialogue here is mainly English), it doesn’t harm the film, because Martinez is a firm believer in showing, rather than telling. That’s just what something like this needs, with gratifyingly few pauses for exposition after things kick-off. In particular, things are ramped up with the arrival of the Liquidator, who disposes of bodies with the aid of liquid nitrogen and a hammer. This is about as wince-inducing as it sounds.

As well as a fairly monstrous villain, who is quite prepared to dispatch his supposed allies if they prove more trouble than they are worth, the main appeal is seeing Alicia use her wits to survive, clambering in, around and through the maze of corridors and service passages in the building, as she tries to stay one step ahead of those hunting her down. The claustrophobic setting, enhanced by a thunderous deluge coming down outside, which has cleared the streets of everyone else, generally work for the movie too. Reading other reviews, seems I’m not the only person to detect notes of John Carpenter, with this in particular evoking feelings of Assault on Precinct 13 crossed with Halloween. Though it has been a very long while since Carpenter has directed anything as shallowly entertaining as Sweet Home.

On the other hand. the floor-plan of the house, an important factor in proceedings, seems more than a little inconsistent. This may be less an apartment building, and more a Klein bottle, for there were times when I was thought Alicia was on an upper level, only for her to open a door and suddenly be back at ground level. However, if you’re prepared to let that aspect slide, along with the occasional moments of less-than-sensible behaviour (almost inevitable, given the genre), this is an energetic and enthusiastic romp, which will likely have you quoting various John McClane-isms over the course of proceedings. But it’s safe to say that Die Hard did not end in a climax which had Bruce Willis in the basement, unconscious, dotted lines drawn on his limbs, in preparation for easy separation by Alan Rickman and his hacksaw. More’s the pity, perhaps.

Dir: Rafa Martínez
Star: Ingrid Garcia-Jonsson, Bruno Sevilla, Oriol Tarrida, Jose Maria Blanco

The Naked Killers

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★★½
“Because ‘Topless killers’ wouldn’t sell quite as well, I guess.”

naked killersNot to be confused with the Hong Kong exploitation classic Naked Killer, this 1977 Spanish film is set mostly on a Pacific island inhabited solely by a veteran Japanese soldier, Yamato, who thinks World War 2 is still going on, and three women, whom he rescued from a plane crash when they were small children. He has raised them in military style, to defend the island against any “invaders”, and it’s not long before these show up. They come in the form of a boatload of treasure-hunters, who have heard that a Japanese freighter carrying gold wrecked itself on the island’s shoals. Adding an additional layer of complexity, the crew, a collection of ne’er-do-wells apparently chosen at random from the dockside, are planning a mutiny, unhappy with captain Paul, and old salt Walter, who knows the island’s location. This leads to a rather unusual alliance between Yamato and his adopted daughters with Paul and Walter, as they fight for survival against the latter’s former employees.

It’s more than a little bizarre, not least because the actor playing the soldier is very obviously not Japanese at all. I was thoroughly confused when he called himself a Japanese officer, until I realized this was made not long after the last Imperial Army holdout. Teruo Nakamura, having surrendered in December 1974. The other unusual aspect is making him more than somewhat sympathetic: perhaps this is due to Spain’s position in the war, which leaned toward the Germany-Japan Axis under General Franco, who had died not long before this was made. He’s shown very much as a father figure, loyal to a fault (which is why he stuck to his post for 30 years after everyone else gave up) and utterly honourable. Witness his face as one of the mutineers tells him the Japanese emperor is now shining the shoes of the American president every morning, or his embarrassment as he tries to breach the subject of s-e-x with his nubile foster family. It’s kinda endearing, despite this still being the worst case of yellow-face I’ve seen since Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The film’s original title translates as The Island of Burning Virgins, which is one of the most awesome titles in exploitation history. Naturally, they spend an impressively hygienic amount of time frolicking in natural pools – though I do have to wonder, where the hell did they get their thoroughly modern bikini costumes? And they’re naturally delighted when the handsome captain shows up, happy to demonstrate to them what this s-e-x thing is actually about. However, they are not mere puppets, laying some rather nasty jungle traps for the “invaders”, and with hand-to-hand skills that are occasionally surprising. It is, of course, extremely silly, very dated and questionable in a whole number of ways. However, it certainly isn’t boring, and compared to certain jungle girl films I’ve seen, can only be appreciated for that.

Dir: Miguel Iglesias
Star: Sita Sadafi, Roxana Dupre, Inca Maris, Alejandro del Enciso

Libertarias

  By

★★
“More like sitting through an earnest lecture in Politics 1.0.1, at a college of dubious merit. “

Like most civil wars, the Spanish one was a nasty, brutal affair that split families as well as the nation. Not that you’d know it from this, which suggests the citizens were entirely behind the anarchist forces: odd how the opposing Fascist forces not only prevailed, but then held power for close to 40 years. You don’t do that without significant popular support. Putting that aside (for the moment), this is the story of Maria (Gil), a young nun ‘liberated’ from her convent as the Civil War gets under way, amid a wave of anti-religious fervour. Initially just trying to get home to Zaragosa, she’s escorted by militant militia woman Pilar (Belen), and eventually decides to join their female fighting force and take up arms against the Fascists. That puts them at odds not just with the men in charge, but many of their own sex, who would rather see them doing laundry and providing ancilliary support, rather than in the front lines.

Actually, I can see from this why they lost, because this comes across as a bunch of idealistic anarchists, playing at soldiers, and going up against the real thing. The results were hardly surprising (and I also note the hypocrisy on view, in a society which professes the equality of men and women, while actively discriminating against the latter). It’s not an area of history with which I’m all that familiar, and the lead actresses did a good job with what were really paper-thin characters – oh, look, it’s a prostitute with a heart of gold. When it sticks to the central group, it’s a lot more successful than when it tries to broaden things out, for example by the inclusion of a former priest with the hots for Maria. It’s also way too heavy-handed with the politics and political symbolism, and the final section, while certainly an effective illustration of the brutality present in armed conflict, comes out of nowhere and jars badly with the tone set by the rest of the film.

There are a few moments which do stand out, such as Maria lecturing the Fascist troops with Anarchist propaganda through a megaphone – that goes about as well as you’d expect. But the bulk of its over two-hour running time is a chore, with a story that feels built around and forced into making its political points, and is only loosely masquerading as entertainment.

Dir: Vicente Aranda
Star: Ariadna Gil, Ana Belen, Victoria Abril, Blanca Apilanez