San Sebastian International Film Festival
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- Casual Day, Spanish director Max Lemcke's second feature, is a funny take on how work life mixes with personal struggles and vice versa. From a sharply scripted tale by the brothers Daniel and Pablo Remon, Lemcke successfully shows how professional and personal lives get entangled with plenty of dry humor in the mix. This film should do well in Spain and other Latin markets but could also work at fests in the U.S. and elsewhere unless The Office hasn't already stolen much of its comic thunder.
Casual Day is about a team-building weekend for a company that will be familiar to thousands of middle-rank executives -- paint balling, incentive games, you name it. The boss, Jose Antonio (Juan Diego), is keen that Ruy (Javier Rios) will marry his beloved daughter. But 25-year-old Ruy feels trapped and turns to the pretty Marta (Estibaliz Gabilondo) for comfort -- with disastrous consequences.
Overlooked Almarcegui (Secun de La Rosa) wants a silly souvenir bear trophy, which becomes not only a good comic foil, but symbolizes how petty work frustrations can build frustration within the mildest of office workers.
Diego steals the show with a bravura performance as the boss teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He veers skillfully between absent-minded exec, who seems unable to break the news he is demoting a hardworking junior, and a demonically obsessive boss who tells himself every day, in front of the mirror "I want to get to the sixth floor" -- where the top executives work.
Lemcke paces the film well. He skillfully flicks between Diego indoctrinating Rios and Tosar trying to seduce Gabilondo. The first is funny-ridiculous, the second sickeningly familiar to many female executives who have endured unwanted attentions from male colleagues.
After Rios is caught seducing Gabilondo in the boss' prized car, he resigns himself to settling down with the boss' daughter. Tosar comments "See you on Monday" -- all is forgotten once back at work.
Lemcke makes effective use of the beautifully mountainous Basque region where Casual Day was filmed.
CASUAL DAY
Estudios Picasso, Montfort Prods., Videntia Frames
Credits:
Director: Max Lemcke
Writers: Daniel Remon, Pablo Remon
Producers: Alvaro Augustin, Iker Monfort
Director of photography: Javier Palacios
Production designer: Juanjo Gracia
Costume designer: Monica Christofoletti
Music: Pierre Omer
Editors: Laurent Dufreche, Pite Pinas
Cast:
Cholo: Luis Tosar
Arozmena: Alex Angulo
Ines: Marta Etura
Psychologist: Alberto San Juan
Bea: Malena Alterio
Jose Antonio: Juan Diego
Marta: Estibaliz Gabilondo
Morales: Arturo Valls
Almarcegui: Secun de la Rosa
Ruy: Javier Rios
Velasco: Carlos Kaniowsky
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- Casual Day, Spanish director Max Lemcke's second feature, is a funny take on how work life mixes with personal struggles and vice versa. From a sharply scripted tale by the brothers Daniel and Pablo Remon, Lemcke successfully shows how professional and personal lives get entangled with plenty of dry humor in the mix. This film should do well in Spain and other Latin markets but could also work at fests in the U.S. and elsewhere unless The Office hasn't already stolen much of its comic thunder.
Casual Day is about a team-building weekend for a company that will be familiar to thousands of middle-rank executives -- paint balling, incentive games, you name it. The boss, Jose Antonio (Juan Diego), is keen that Ruy (Javier Rios) will marry his beloved daughter. But 25-year-old Ruy feels trapped and turns to the pretty Marta (Estibaliz Gabilondo) for comfort -- with disastrous consequences.
Overlooked Almarcegui (Secun de La Rosa) wants a silly souvenir bear trophy, which becomes not only a good comic foil, but symbolizes how petty work frustrations can build frustration within the mildest of office workers.
Diego steals the show with a bravura performance as the boss teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He veers skillfully between absent-minded exec, who seems unable to break the news he is demoting a hardworking junior, and a demonically obsessive boss who tells himself every day, in front of the mirror "I want to get to the sixth floor" -- where the top executives work.
Lemcke paces the film well. He skillfully flicks between Diego indoctrinating Rios and Tosar trying to seduce Gabilondo. The first is funny-ridiculous, the second sickeningly familiar to many female executives who have endured unwanted attentions from male colleagues.
After Rios is caught seducing Gabilondo in the boss' prized car, he resigns himself to settling down with the boss' daughter. Tosar comments "See you on Monday" -- all is forgotten once back at work.
Lemcke makes effective use of the beautifully mountainous Basque region where Casual Day was filmed.
CASUAL DAY
Estudios Picasso, Montfort Prods., Videntia Frames
Credits:
Director: Max Lemcke
Writers: Daniel Remon, Pablo Remon
Producers: Alvaro Augustin, Iker Monfort
Director of photography: Javier Palacios
Production designer: Juanjo Gracia
Costume designer: Monica Christofoletti
Music: Pierre Omer
Editors: Laurent Dufreche, Pite Pinas
Cast:
Cholo: Luis Tosar
Arozmena: Alex Angulo
Ines: Marta Etura
Psychologist: Alberto San Juan
Bea: Malena Alterio
Jose Antonio: Juan Diego
Marta: Estibaliz Gabilondo
Morales: Arturo Valls
Almarcegui: Secun de la Rosa
Ruy: Javier Rios
Velasco: Carlos Kaniowsky
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/24/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A huge hit in its native Mexico, "The Other Conquest" isn't exactly your typical crowd-pleasing fare.
Set during the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, the epic drama is a visually arresting if overwrought portrait of a subsequent spiritual battle to preserve cultural and religious identity.
But while somewhat reminiscent, stylistically and thematically, of 1998's "Elizabeth", this assured directorial debut from Salvador Carrasco (who also handled screenplay and editing chores) is a bit of an endurance test.
It's unlikely to strike the same kind of emotional chord with U.S. audiences, though given a release pattern that pays close attention to areas with a healthy Latino presence -- not to mention generous helpings of nudity and violence -- it could end up doing respectable business.
Filmed on location in Mexico City and environs, the story begins at the site of the Great Temple of Mexico, whose sacred grounds are strewn with the bodies of Aztec priests and nobility slaughtered by the Spanish army under the command of noted conqueror Hernando Cortes (Inaki Aierra).
The only person to survive the massacre is Topiltzin (Damian Delgado), a young Indian codex scribe who stayed alive by taking refuge under a pile of corpses. The illegitimate son of Emperor Moctezuma, he's eventually captured by Spanish troops, but his life is again spared when his half-sister Tecuichpo (Elpidia Carrillo), who happens to be one of Cortes' mistresses, makes an appeal on his behalf.
Instead of death, Topiltzin is brutally flogged before being taken under the wing of Fray Diego (Jose Carlos Rodriguez), a Spanish friar whose life mission is to make the "savages" see the errors of their human-sacrificing ways and accept the Virgin Mary into their empty lives. While Topiltzin (now rechristened Tomas) has taken up residence in a monastery, he remains an uneasy convert despite the friar's well-meaning efforts to save his soul.
With its powerful images and a fiercely dedicated performance by the agile Delgado, "The Other Conquest" makes for a potent history lesson -- but one that runs its course long before the film does.
After a while, the endlessly restated themes of religious persecution and cultural annihilation start getting tiresome, no matter how vividly portrayed. Newcomer Carrasco and cinematographer Arturo de La Rosa have a rich visual sense that lends this modestly budgeted effort an impressive luster.
Aurally, Samuel Zyman's symphonics and Jorge Reyes' indigenous strains provide a nice harmonic counterpoint to the picture's cultural conflicts. They're topped off by an appropriately elegiac aria performed by producer Alvaro Domingo's father, Placido.
THE OTHER CONQUEST
Hombre D'Oro
Carrasco & Domingo Films presents an Alvaro Domingo production of a Salvador Carrasco film
Credits: Producer: Alvaro Domingo; Director-screenwriter: Salvador Carrasco; Executive producer: Placido Domingo; Director of photography: Arturo de la Rosa; Production designer: Andrea Sanderson; Editor: Salvador Carrasco; Costume designers: Rocio Ramirez, Angela Dodson; Music: Samuel Zyman, Jorge Reyes; Music supervisor: Andrea Sanderson. Cast: Topiltzin/Tomas: Damian Delgado; Fray Diego de La Coruna: Jose Carlos Rodriguez; Tecuichpo/Dona Isabel: Elpidia Carrillo; Hernando Cortes: Inaki Aierra; Capt. Cristobal Quijano: Honorato Magaloni; Indian Nun: Zaide Silvia Gutierrez. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 110 minutes.
Set during the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, the epic drama is a visually arresting if overwrought portrait of a subsequent spiritual battle to preserve cultural and religious identity.
But while somewhat reminiscent, stylistically and thematically, of 1998's "Elizabeth", this assured directorial debut from Salvador Carrasco (who also handled screenplay and editing chores) is a bit of an endurance test.
It's unlikely to strike the same kind of emotional chord with U.S. audiences, though given a release pattern that pays close attention to areas with a healthy Latino presence -- not to mention generous helpings of nudity and violence -- it could end up doing respectable business.
Filmed on location in Mexico City and environs, the story begins at the site of the Great Temple of Mexico, whose sacred grounds are strewn with the bodies of Aztec priests and nobility slaughtered by the Spanish army under the command of noted conqueror Hernando Cortes (Inaki Aierra).
The only person to survive the massacre is Topiltzin (Damian Delgado), a young Indian codex scribe who stayed alive by taking refuge under a pile of corpses. The illegitimate son of Emperor Moctezuma, he's eventually captured by Spanish troops, but his life is again spared when his half-sister Tecuichpo (Elpidia Carrillo), who happens to be one of Cortes' mistresses, makes an appeal on his behalf.
Instead of death, Topiltzin is brutally flogged before being taken under the wing of Fray Diego (Jose Carlos Rodriguez), a Spanish friar whose life mission is to make the "savages" see the errors of their human-sacrificing ways and accept the Virgin Mary into their empty lives. While Topiltzin (now rechristened Tomas) has taken up residence in a monastery, he remains an uneasy convert despite the friar's well-meaning efforts to save his soul.
With its powerful images and a fiercely dedicated performance by the agile Delgado, "The Other Conquest" makes for a potent history lesson -- but one that runs its course long before the film does.
After a while, the endlessly restated themes of religious persecution and cultural annihilation start getting tiresome, no matter how vividly portrayed. Newcomer Carrasco and cinematographer Arturo de La Rosa have a rich visual sense that lends this modestly budgeted effort an impressive luster.
Aurally, Samuel Zyman's symphonics and Jorge Reyes' indigenous strains provide a nice harmonic counterpoint to the picture's cultural conflicts. They're topped off by an appropriately elegiac aria performed by producer Alvaro Domingo's father, Placido.
THE OTHER CONQUEST
Hombre D'Oro
Carrasco & Domingo Films presents an Alvaro Domingo production of a Salvador Carrasco film
Credits: Producer: Alvaro Domingo; Director-screenwriter: Salvador Carrasco; Executive producer: Placido Domingo; Director of photography: Arturo de la Rosa; Production designer: Andrea Sanderson; Editor: Salvador Carrasco; Costume designers: Rocio Ramirez, Angela Dodson; Music: Samuel Zyman, Jorge Reyes; Music supervisor: Andrea Sanderson. Cast: Topiltzin/Tomas: Damian Delgado; Fray Diego de La Coruna: Jose Carlos Rodriguez; Tecuichpo/Dona Isabel: Elpidia Carrillo; Hernando Cortes: Inaki Aierra; Capt. Cristobal Quijano: Honorato Magaloni; Indian Nun: Zaide Silvia Gutierrez. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 110 minutes.
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