Cosas insignificantes (2008) User Reviews

Awesome movie depicting the intricacies of human relations

[Priyankar · 9/10 · 16 August 2009]

Extremely well made drama where different shades of human relations are portrayed beautifully.

The acting is wonderful and every actor meets demand of their character - especially Paulina Gaitan portraying Esmiralda and the child actor portraying Lina. The transition of emotions in Esmiralda, specifically when she gives her box to Augusto, and goes to meet Lina, was really wonderful and made me cry. Also, Fernando Luján does extremely well capturing the repentant father as the character of Augosto. Carmelo Gómez gives a solid performance as Iván(a troubled father and husband). Other performances are good.

The movie does not focus much on sharp dialogs, rather uses the expressions of the actors to capture the drama. The characters belong to modern society, and suffer from the ill-effects of isolated existence. The movie centers on relations between a couple, a father-daughter, and two sisters. It starts with a slow pace and melancholy mood, and gradually picks up the pace. Overall, the film ends with a positive note, where the characters realize the value of human relations.

The cinematography is top notch and the background music is superb. The use of sepia, occasional silence, reiterating the same incident form different perspectives, rhythmic variation in the background music – captures the emotions and the transitions of emotions beautifully.

Overall a breathtaking, feel-good film.

The treasure chest

[jotix100 · 5/10 · 4 August 2011]

Andrea Martinez, making her full length film debut, shows an affection for the disjointed narrative, so popular with her fellow Mexican creators, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo Arriaga, who have made a name for themselves with this type of story telling.

We are given a look at the way five lives touch each other in separate instances. There is Esmeralda, a young woman working in a small Chinese restaurant in Mexico City. She takes care of her ill grandmother and a younger sister. Esmeralda is a hoarder, she keeps objects that she finds and stashes them in a chest she keeps locked. She wants, above all to go join her two siblings in Canada, an almost impossible dream.

Augusto a child psychologist, is a frequent diner at the restaurant where Esmeralda works. An older man, he is only seeing a few patients. One day he leaves his wallet behind by the table where he ate. Esmeralda takes it. The money inside does not interest her as much as the piece of paper she finds inside with what appears a telephone number. Augusto, long estranged from his family, is reminded by his wife to call his daughter that lives far away. It is too late for that, he decides.

There is another man that frequents the restaurant, Ivan, a doctor who loves to do origami figures with the paper place setting at the table. He lives with Eli, a photographer. Their relationship is not going anywhere. He has turned impotent, or so it appears to Eli. The reason, we get to learn, is because he has found out he has a son from his involvement with Paula, now living with another man. The boy is facing an almost fatal disease.

Ms. Martinez repeats her scenes as though to give emphasis to each narrative. She reveals a bit more as the action goes back to something we already saw. She works as though peeling a fruit, each layer tells us a little bit more about each of the people in this tale. The film gathers some familiar faces in the Mexican and Spanish cinemas. Barbara Mori, Fernando Lujan and Paulina Gaitan have been seen before. Carmelo Gomez and Lucia Jimenez are the Spanish guests in the film.

I don't remember this movie at all

[davidtraversa-1 · 1/10 · 26 August 2013]

Really. I know that I saw it because I wrote two or three reviews of it back when, and all of them had been deleted, why, I will never know.

Although I would like to, because I still want to believe in "The freedom of expression", loudly touted but seldom applied.

I didn't used bad words, forbidden expressions or insulting ones, so, the only reason for deleting my reviews must have been:

A) The director of this awful movie felt I was very wrong in my appreciations.

B) Some outraged viewer directly related to the director felt I was hurting his feelings with an unjust critic.

C) The director parents felt also my critic as unjustly punishing and inconvenient for the director's career.

I won't write a FOURTH review, that's for sure, since this bad movie is not even worth of just ONE review, I'm just writing this lines feeling affronted by a censorship that allows so easily to remove a negative review from being published, that's all.

Thank you anyway for publishing these lines.