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Metaal en melancholie (1994)
the lack of a DVD edition
It's about 14 years I saw this wonderful film, in the Portuguese TV. Five years later, I reviewed it in Film School with a different perspective, as I had the opportunity to feel such atmosphere in Cuba, few months before. Heddy Honigmann's approach to the passenger POV inside a taxi in Lima (Peru) is quite similar the experience you can have traveling inside a taxi in Havana. The old models, rebuilt to the last part, as a living frame to the city, as an itinerant exhibition in the gallery of colors, lights, sounds and faces of the daily beat. Barely, we get out of the cars. The city itself, is a living entity that interacts with the viewer without asking permission. For every driver, we get a new puzzle piece - a new intimate narrative - which allows us to understand the beliefs and the expectations of those people.
Fourteen years have passed after my first screening and I cannot see the moment that I will substitute my Portuguese subtitled and incomplete TV recording I made on VHS in 1994 by a fine edition on DVD... I hope.
------------- (2010 review)
For the occasion of a full retrospective of her work and a tender Masterclass at Indie Lisboa Festival, that will be kept dearly in our memories, the Portuguese publisher Midas edited a box with four titles which includes Metaal en Melancholie.
Cuando nadie nos mira (2004)
More expectations on it.
Barcelona is known as a nest of creation and creativity. We see theater companies with sui generis profile like La Fura Dels Baus resisting and imposing their speech. On the other extreme, we can dive into the master genius of Gaudí's marks allover the city. Fine actors, singers, musicians, use to star on Spanish cultural adventures. Weerdo pearls awake us for alternative glances on cinema. It's precisely these arousing regards that made me write this review as I found out that Alex Ollé's Fausto 5.0 (2001) film assistant editor is precisely the director of this short. It's inevitable: we feel the reference on the intriguing atmosphere of this film, after a very nice but illusory opening credits sequence. The credits sequence it's much more interesting than the following green cold ambiance, we usually find on cliché PUB look films. Is this revealing the possible background of this Catalan as débutant director? The premise is really good but here it is a fine example of how a clean cinematography and aseptic plain sets cannot support the lack of a good script. The lead teenager model María Valverde (won a Goya for Best New Actress in the same year, among other prizes), got her chance to have a film made for her together with the always truthful Nieve de Medina. Anyway, is a nice first film and we can guess the promising career this short claims to every young blood involved on it. Keep on going...
Terminal (2003)
speechless but brilliant.
I saw this wonderful piece on a cable channel. I wish I could find out these kind of films in the theater room, before feature films. Short films need this chance. Big audience is guaranteed if they are shown as complement to features. I was so lucky to find it, even on TV. OK. The short? It's a speechless film but full of narrative interaction. I'm a great fan of a strong eye-to-eye connection dialogs, between characters. "The Girl", played by Blanca Oteyza is a round character. She suffers an evolution along the story. "The Man" (Miguel Angel Solá), I saw him in Fausto 5.0, the Ollé/Ortiz/ Padrisa's film he made the year before this short. I liked him a lot, there. In this short he gives a clean performance, building a credible character. The most interesting thing in this touching story is the identification process by people who see it, starting with the first reaction to the junked girl, discriminative to drug abuse. Then, we pass by over an indifferent attitude and finally the tender to that careless gesture, so subtle. It's a voyage to human condition. A film about solitude, pain and regret.
Caché (2005)
Almost the same effect in Portuguese audience
In Porto (Portugal), at the end of the film some people were questioning about the last shot: the entrance of the college with the two boys talking without perceptible dialog. People became confused and were arguing about who film who... the least important thing in the film, in my opinion. I think Haneke was once again eye-blinking to audience as he has already done in Funny Games (1997) telling us "this is just a film, please don't mess around reality with fiction". Juliette Binoche make a very credible mother-in-distress character. Daniel Auteuil has an wonderful moment of passive acting when Georges decides to get in bed with an headache, near the end of the film, crystallizing in this brief moment the flabby attitude of this character along the film.