La plaça del Diamant

¨La Plaza del Diamante¨ is a Spanish movie about the life of a young woman named Colometa (Silvia Munt), it begins in 1928, in the awning of the Plaza del Diamante, the main festival of the Gracia neighborhood in Barcelona, where she dances and meets her future husband. Thus she marries a jealous carpenter named Quimet (Lluis Homar), set in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and its subsequent aftermath. It stars Silvia Munt as an ordinary housewife with two children who takes care of them in the late 1930s, when the Spanish Civil War begins and her husband goes off to fight. She is an ordinary woman who worked in a workshop when she met the cheerful carpenter who married her, and their life together passed without major problems. Astonished by life, by the world, by everything, Natalia, La Colometa (La Palomita) according to the nickname her husband imposes on her since they met, is the common thread of the novel and the film. Through it, he describes the Gràcia neighborhood, Republican Barcelona, Barcelona at war and Franco's Barcelona, balancing Natalia in a coming and going of circumstances that, always of foreign origin, give her specific modes of action. The young woman, like so many others of her time, must live through a particularly cruel period of history, and accept without complaint everything that her life and her husband impose on her. But then she is forced to raise her children in difficult circumstances and, after the death of her husband, her life undergoes another important change when she gets married for the second time. Little by little, Natàlia will see her loved ones die, she will go hungry and face all kinds of difficulties to try to raise her children, and that will produce a change of character in her, and a subsequent recovery of her identity. Beneath Colometa's acquiescent and tolerant exterior there must be only a few discontents, a few unrealized dreams, but they never emerge as she moves happily from one episode of her life to another.

The play was adapted to the theater in the form of a monologue in 2014, with Lolita Flores in the role of "Colometa." Plaza del Diamante is a square in the Villa de Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona, famous for giving the title to the novel La Plaza del Diamante by Mercè Rodoreda. In homage to this novel, the square has a statue that represents the protagonist and her pigeons, hence the name of the statue is La Colometa. La Plaza del Diamante was adapted into this film in 1982 by director Francesc Betriu, but with the leftover footage it was used to lengthen it and a television series of 4 one-hour chapters was made. Sílvia Munt played the character of Natalia, "Colometa", while Lluís Homar played Quimet, the protagonist's first husband, both with acceptable performances. Accompanied by other Catalan secondaries , such as: Alfred Lucchetti, Joaquim Cardona, Mercedes Monterrey, Ana Lizaran, Marta Molins and Paca Gabaldón.

It was written by Mercé Rodoreda in Catalan during 1959. Since its publication, this novel has been translated into twenty-six languages, managing to spread a story of women in post-war Spain. The fascination aroused by the pages of the novel made several film directors feel the need to translate this literary text into cinematographic language. Among them are, for example, Juan Antonio Bardem, Jaime Camino, Pilar Miró or Basilio Martín Patiño. However, it was finally the director Francesc Betriu who managed to carry out this project in 1982. A year later, the film was broadcast as a four-part television series. As with the novel, the television series was acquired by more than thirty countries. However, because the film was originally derived from a television series, it is devalued with deep cuts that leave some scenes meaningless. Natalia, played by actress Silvia Munt, is presented as a character with minimal presence in the dialogues, but communicative thanks to her listening, her expression of silence and her gaze. Thus, Natalia will be determined, first of all, by the feminine roles - obedience, pregnancy, caring for children - that her husband Quimet imposes on her.

The motion picture was uneven but professionally directed by Francisco Betriu, though it has some flaws , gaps and failures. Betriu was an expert on literary adaptations, working since the 60s, being his first one: ¨Tinto con amor¨ (1968), and continuing with ¨Corazón solitario¨, ¨Furia española¨, ¨La plaza del Diamante¨, ¨Réquiem para un campesino Español¨, ¨Los fieles sirvientes¨, ¨La viuda andaluza¨, ¨Sinatra¨, ¨La Duquesa Roja¨,¨Una Perfecta Pareja¨, ¨El paraíso ya no es lo que era¨, among others. Rating: 5/10. Average.