Eine befremdliche Geschichte

It is short in duration and its story is not a big deal, but it is entertaining and fun.

A nice and charming comedy shot in Valle de Roncal, Navarra, Spain dealing with a village willing to everything . The story starts in an unspecified point of Spain's geography named Fuentejuela de Arriba, a so small mountain town with a so big problem: a population of 16 people, all them aged, without young ones nor children . But it has a fateful warning : if the population lows to 15 or less for the incoming census of the region, Fuentejuela de Arriba will disappear to be annexed to Fuentejuela de Abajo as an only one town, for desperation of their inhabitants . They have to deal with two of the biggest problems her town has : a fight with her neighbors from below and a repopulation that has only been able to keep one inhabitant , the hippy foreigner (Jon Kortajarena) who lives isolated in his new home. In a world where integration rules, this could not be missing, settling in a rural space, such as Fuentejuela de Arriba, a little village where everyone knows each other and links that are difficult to make dizzy have been established . The little town is threatened with a blizzard but not isolated from the rest of the world. But it seems that this is going to change when our Africans who speak an unknown language have come there fleeing from the Spanish mafia that wants to enslave them in a nightclub , as their arrival causes unpredictable consequences for everybody. Azquil (Malcolm Treviño) seems like the intelligent leader of a diverse quartet who only have in common their tribal dance and their desire to stay in the new land they have arrived at. Each person contributes their grain of sand in this desert that we call society , enriching cultures and magnifying hearts. Shukra (Ricardo Nkosi) is the brute force that manifests itself with everything and everyone and suspects evil intentions on the part of the mountain villagers. Calulu (Jimmy Castro) is tenderness and feeling, the heart of a body that sometimes breaks up into many parts working for the community. Finally, we find Latisha (Montse Pla) , a passionate, brave and modern woman of our time who doesn't mind experiencing new sensations and falling in love with the least convenient person. At the village there are peculiar and offbeat citizens like two spinster sisters, a bossy mother, a teenager with unleashed hormones , the owner of the only bar, a violent old man who loves shooting, or a recent widow with a secret. Along the way , Teresa (Carmen Machi) decides use the Africans to increase the population and save the town, specially after to learn about the death of Alfonso, Manolita's (Enriqueta Carballeira) husband and their only one councilor. Teresa asks help her friend Jaime (Pepón Nieto) to integrate the Africans in the town: it causes that Teresa feels interested about Azquil . A little town at the edge of the missing take desperate measures to avoid it !.

This movie is fun to see , because of the bewildering and funny situations that protagonists suffer , provoking a lot of laughs and amusement with embarrassing misunderstandings. This is a bemusing picture that packs comical sketches , tongue-in-cheek , grotesque incidents , but above all, it especially contains humor and Irony, at the same time giving a sour criticism about hipocrisy , bigotry and the extreme gossiping. ¨A Remarkable Tale¨ has a first part in which he introduces each of the villagers, including their house and their customs and the invading foreigners who do not come to take their women, perhaps their men . The encounter takes place in the snow, also a contrast of colors, white of the snowy landscape and black of his skin, is perhaps the most interesting of a very typical beginning that reminds us of the impressive ¨Welcome Mr. Marshall¨ with the presentation to potential strangers of its famous and homemade egg yolks. But , eventually , everything is reduced to the search for love , and to the shared struggle in pursuit of a common goal such as perpetuating local customs and not abandoning the villages from the deep Spain. The problem of the depopulation of certain areas is leaving a land barren that should never be forgotten . The screwball plot is plain , simple and silly , as a group of rogue inhabitants want the inhabited village progresses but things go wrong . The cinema of contrasts is always well received, we love that of comparing the opposites and making the differences in the end become common points of view .Sitting in a rare middle ground between the stylishly enjoyable and the gross silliness . The fear and rejection caused by the unknown brings out the worst in us, making us lose the possibility of advancing in a globalized world where there is room for everyone. Being a choral film , in Luis García Berlanga style , here shows up a great number of fine Spanish actors , in which standing out Carmen Machi as the good woman who attempts to reconcile the villagers .Stars Carmen Machi who gives a stunning acting , as usual. Machi is one of the best Spanish actresses , as Cinema as Television, with penchant for comedy genre, such as: "8 apellidos vascos, 8 apellidos catalanes , Que se mueran los feos, Descongelate , Un rey en la Habana, Perdieron el Norte , Mi Gran Noche , Vilaviciosa de al lado, La Tribu , Thi Mai Rumbo a Vietnam , Perdiendo el Este , Kamikaze , Lo nunca visto" , among others . Being well accompanied by a good cast with full of familiar faces : Pepón Nieto, Kiti Mánver , Jon Kortajarena , Enriqueta Carballeira, Jimmy Castro , Txema Blasco , Mariana Cordero , Sonia Almarcha, Paco Tous and Pablo Carbonell as a cop .

The motion picture was professional but regularly directed by Nacho G Velilla Marina Seresesky (La puerta abierta , Empieza el baile) . She is a fine craftsman , expert on comedies, dramas and Shorts (La boda, El cortejo, La nueva vida, The beginning) . Marina Seresesky tears it down, trivializing our worst nightmares and awarding a medal to all those who we have mistakenly prejudiced at first . The Argentinian director Marina Seresesky, who had already worked in cinema with Carmen Machi in La puerta abierta . With A Remarkable Tale she turns a notorious filmmaker and writer . Rating : 5.5/10.

I don't have much to say. I just thought it was a painfully boring movie with bad comedy. It was also very... Racially charged? In a way that made me uncomfortable throughout the whole movie. I don't think they really accomplished that "inclusion" message they tried to give.

The actors were good and the characters were well-developed, plus a heartwarming development later in the story (imo).

But even if the movie frames the village people as behind the times and racist, it still doesn't make it any less uncomfortable to watch them make light of it. The black characters felt unrealistic and one-dimensional, too.

TL;DR: The comedy is weak, and had they consulted a sensitivity reader or someone from the area they wanted to represent, I feel like this would have been a VERY different movie.

Por si las moscas: I'm Hispanic and watched the movie in the original Spanish.

Integration is good, racism is bad, and everybody needs love. And laughs, which is something this movie provides... in moderation :)

Written apparently according to Netflix's dictation, together with the depicted Spanish villagers, we learn our lesson of the day, that illegal immigrants and gays are saints and useful to western society for breeding reasons. While it is rightfully stated that baddies are baddies independently of colour (or gender I would like to add), it then ammends that they are worst if they are white. An otherwise harmless romantic comedie, became just a vessel of leftist political preach. The characters and protagonists were doing fine in a charming Spanish village background, however it could have been so much more. But no, our lesson is just that we have to absorb the illlegal immigrants by white marriages. So monodimensional it hurts even the immigrants who legal or not migrate with something more in their mind than just reproduction. They could have made something better, but no. Let's leave the complicated to a better writer. Terrible camera use at times with sunlight thrown to our faces hiding what we are meant to watch. If you can shallow all the above you might enjoy a bit. But it felt longer than it is. Which gave me a well deserved sleep. After all, a lesson stays in our mind if we learn it just before sleeep.