EdgarST

After I watched "Güeros" (2014), I confess I put an X on Alonso Ruizpalacios and I did not see his subsequent films, much less his television work, which he began 20 years ago. But now that I have seen «La cocina» I think I will reconsider my veto and watch as many of his previous works as I can.

I do not know if the strong effect «La cocina» had on me was because it is based on the play «The Kitchen» by Arnold Wesker, an illustrious British playwright whose name is among the outstanding figures of the "Angry Young Men" movement in theater, which included John Osborne and Harold Pinter. As Wesker once said, they were not exactly angry, and certainly not within the context of the "swingin' London" of the 1960s, but rather a group of artists with a greater awareness of the economic, social, and political reality of the United Kingdom than most of their predecessors and who, from their perspectives, renewed literature, film, theater, music, and the visual arts.

However, I have no doubt that Ruizpalacios' contribution has been big and significant, because although the play «The Kitchen» arose from Wesker's experiences in a London kitchen (already filmed in 1961 by James Hill), the resulting film prioritizes the dilemma of Mexican Pedro in a restaurant in contemporary New York, where "representatives of the United Nations" work, most of them with dubious legal status, subject to the whims of an owner named Rashid, a chief of staff who is the son of Mexican migrants, and a chef who seems straight out of a German Expressionist horror story.

The film, moreover, acquires an unexpected resonance today, given the changes in the United States Presidency and the measures against immigrants. The characters -intelligently painted with brushstrokes, without delving into psychologisms- have their own dramas. What the irrepressible and angry Pedro (he is indeed angry, thanks to Raúl Briones' intense and passionate performance) experiences is a passionate melodrama with the American waitress Julia (Rooney Mara), whom he has impregnated. While she is considering an abortion that afternoon, one of the cash registers turns up missing $800, turning everyone into suspects amid their lives of limitation and deprivation (which we sense without the film going into any details). There is room for poetry, humor, science fiction, eroticism, and plot excesses (such as the kitchen flooding, where waiters, cooks, and the screaming chef continue to work nonstop), as the dramatic tension increases, increases, and explodes.

«La cocina» is a must-see film, even though it clocks in at 139 minutes, but it always has something interesting to tell, in a setting as prosaic as a kitchen, with a unique and strange touch that revisits and reframes magical realism. It is not without its difficult and imperfect moments, but I believe they are also characteristic of great artistic endeavors.

In a single word - capolavoro ("masterpiece" in English). I saw a masterpiece tonight. Maestro Ermanno Olmi's 2001 film «Il mestiere delle armi.» We all praise Rossellini, Fellini, Antonioni, Risi, Pasolini, Visconti, Leone, De Sica, Scola, Rosi, Wertmüller, Bellocchio, or the Taviani brothers, but we often forget Olmi. I have only seen four titles of his extensive filmography, and they were satisfying experiences: the diptych about the working class, «Il posto» and «I fidanzati,» his film «Il arbero degli zoccholi» which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and now this wonderful film.

«Il mestiere delle armi» recounts the final days of Giovanni de' Medici (1498-1526), during his final campaign as captain of the Pope's army, against the German hordes approaching Rome to capture and sack it. Giovanni died at the age of 28, one of the first victims of modern artillery. In the film, he is played by Bulgarian actor Christo Jivkov, who, curiously, died at the age of 48 in 2023.

The story moves at a steady pace, marked by the protagonist's imminent death, which is announced from the first minutes. The film describes the intrigues among the various Italian nobles in the face of the advancing invaders, Giovanni's passionate love for a married woman, and the clashes between armies, with brilliant attention to weapons, armors, costumes, music, lighting (excellent photography by Fabio Olmi, the director's son), and 16th-century medical instruments.

The film won nine David di Donatello Awards (the Italian film industry's highest accolade) for best production in 2001: best film, director, screenwriter (Olmi), producer, director of photography, editor, musician, art director, and costume designer. A complete cinematic experience, which I recommend.

The worst thing that can happen to an (intolerant) person is to sit down and watch «Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project» expecting it to be a retelling of the story of the monster from Mary Shelley's novel. The intolerant will surely find it horrifying, as did the "critics" of the American film industry magazines The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, who were thinking of Boris Karloff while watching a 17-year-old monster.

Of course, it does not help that it is based on a play of the same name by the Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó, who has said on more than one occasion that it is an adaptation of Shelley's novel. If we are a little more curious about it than the Reporter and the Variety, it certainly is. The creature created by a man, with his own contributions and those of a hardened mother; the abandonment of the creature, who becomes a strange, impulsive young man who cannot distinguish right from wrong; and then the deaths... But while Shelley's novel introduces elements of fantasy and sensationalism, this is an austere drama.

A filmmaker (Mundruczó himself) is planning a new film. In an opening scene, he confesses that he has been searching for his ideal actor for two years, then he holds auditions on Christmas Eve, and suddenly, everything turns into something worse than a nightmare... The nightmare leaves you open to the possibility that you have dreamed it all. Not here. Nothing that happens (and everything is heavy stuff) can be undone. The consequence of the last incident is predictable, but the film lasts just 5 or 6 minutes more and concludes... You are left feeling the final blow, knowing there is no way out.

«Tender Son» is a good drama, disturbing, perceptive, compassionate, and I cannot disagree more with the Reporter and the Variety, who were looking (like good pseudo-critics) for psychologisms, motivations, journeys, arcs, heroes, limits... I feel that the impression has changed a bit since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 15 years ago, and it has become something else, a death rite, as Baron Frankenstein's creature liked it, or perhaps a cult film, like other works by Mundruczó.