El perfecto desconocido

A sort of Being There movie where an Irishman who comes to a small Balearic Island town helps everyone without understanding a word they are saying...like a psychiatrist who only nods and people are cured.

The feel good cloying hallmark quality of the natives was the only thing that takes this thing down a notch or two. The PC elements... a probable lesbian who wants to join the military and repair tanks and a low confidence boy with a hearing aide (symbolic) while cooked are rather pleasantly and tastefully done. Also there is a middle aged daffy woman who wants to get pregnant (sub plot) and never figures out the Irishman (Meaney) doesn't understand her conversations with him. But people aren't this cloyingly simple. In fact what I have read at least of Corsica foreigners are regularly bombed and killed.

The Irishman was trying to find where his girlfriend died when she ran from him on a vacation years before and died falling into a cave "sink hole" that dot the area. He only has a photograph to go by and he is trying to make some closure on the tragedy.

It works best as a comedy but with a bittersweet underpinning.... It gets a solid 7....suspending disbelief for the comedy. Again the main flaw is the over done too feel good stuff.

RECOMMEND

An age-old premise for films, but in this case a delightful cast of disconnected folks young and old - trying to make sense of what they don't know, can't do, and must live with. I saw this at the Palm Springs Film Festival and found myself enchanted. Clearly the work of a master storyteller, Arturo Ruiz. Colm Meaney (Mark O'Reilly) pulls us in from the beginning, silently, and each character projects their own story of who they think he is and why he's there. With no way to verbally communicate we see, in the case of the two young people he befriends, his compassionate nature and sensitivity through actions and the innate intelligence he helps them discover in themselves. Powerful performance by Ana Wagener. In short - a study in the power and pitfalls of imagination. Loved every minute.