15 minutes into ASFALTO, Calparsoro's latest directorial effort, I am still thinking that I am not going to like this. It has rained a lot since Godard said that all you needed to make a movie was a gun and a girl. Yesterday's boutade is today's common place. But something happens in the way and I find myself genuinely involved with the characters and deeply moved. And ultimately that is what filmmaking is about - I don't care about anything else, but move me, make me feel something, deliver an emotional experience. And ASFALTO definitively does, this is no ordinary Tarantinesque picture. In a year of mediocre Spanish movies it stands out. The script by Calparsoro and Santiago Tabernero underexplains certain subplots, but builds three very charismatic and believable characters and gives them great scenes to play. Najwa Nimri is OUTSTANDING as Lucia, the bad girl that wants to mend her ways, walking up and down the steamy streets of Madrid in the midst of summer wearing skimpy hotpants and high heels. Her Lucia is vulnerable, volatile and lovable. Gustavo Salmeron is once again great as Chino, the conventional guy forced to become a policeman, and Juan Diego Botto infuses the threesome with mystery. Beautifully shot by Josep Maria Civit, some of the action scenes are not terribly well executed, but it makes up for it with pure beauty in shots like Nimri and Botto asleep inside a discarded truck wheel looking at Madrid as the sun comes up, and many more. It has its flaws but the virtues of the film redeems it at the end. Beautiful, must see.
