La Celestina

'La Celestina' is based on Fernando de Rojas 1499 novel but this translation on screen is truly dull. 'La Celestina' looks good. The costumes and sets look radiant. The score is pleasant to the ears until it gets too repetitive and intrusive. The screenplay is poor especially the awful dialogues. 'La Celestina' is more a soap opera than a movie. Perhaps the director was confused about whether he was making a movie or a 'telenovella'. The dialogue delivery is laughably bad. The soliloquys are most annoying. The acting is overtly theatrical. With actors like Jordi Molla and Penelope Cruz, one would have expected better. Maribel Verdu is the only one who turns in a decent performance. For a fairy tale, 'La Celestina' has a lot of sex which are tastefully shot. Anyway, the film doesn't otherwise live up to expectation. Yawn.

Nothing stands out as particularly bad in this movie. The problem is, nothing is especially good, either. The story kept me mildly interested, but the entertainment value was usually kept to a minimum. The ending surprised me a little, but it certainly wasn't enough to cancel out the overall mediocrity. A decent way to kill some time, but nothing more.

This movie is part of the spanish cultural heritage. That is the play is that it is based on.

Written by Fernando Rojas in the beginning of the renaissance it was meant as a warning for the youth in his days. That is why this movie feel so staged all the time. For Penelope Cruz it was the beginning of her career and it must have been a huge honor to have been selected for this role.

The movie follows the play fairly truly from beginning to the end. All characters specialy la Celestina were done well and they didn't look all to professional. Remember it was a play meant to be performed at local gatherings. If you go to Salamanca in Spain you can find the parco Calisto y Melibea as a rememberance. Only open at times noboddy knows.

LA CELESTINA was written in 1499 by Fernando de Rojas and is considered to be second only to Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE as the greatest work of Spanish literature. Here the novel is adapted for the screen by Rafael Azcona, Francisco Rico, and Gerardo Vera, the last contributor serving as director of this sadly uneven film. Despite boasting a cast of some of the finest actors in Spain, the dialogue is such a mishmash of old rhythms and contemporary expressions that much of the magic is lost.

But then the story is a bit on the 15th century wild side: a handsome young knight Calisto (Juan Diego Botto) is obsessively in love with the beautiful Melibea (Penélope Cruz) yet it takes the love potions of the bruja Celestina (Terele Pávez), enlisted by Calisto's conniving servant Sempronio (Nancho Novo), to effect the magic. Calisto's faithful and humble servant Pármeno (Jordi Mollà) fails in his attempts to block the spells delivered by Celestina but to no avail. Once the magic is in effect the worlds of each person fall apart. The human passions of love, greed, lust, revenge, and desire interplay in a manner that brings destruction in the path.

Made in 1996 before many of the actors involved became famous, the film 'looks' magical with radiant costumes and sets and spot on music. But the dialogue is clumsy, the English translations even clumsier, and the whole story fails to work its spell on the audience. Instead of a fiery climax the film just sort of fizzles. But it is interesting to see Penélope Cruz, Juan Diego Botto, Maribel Verdú, Jordi Mollà and Nancho Novo in their early stage of development. This is an escapist period piece that could have been so much better, but even in this state it is entertaining. Grady Harp

If you like Penélope Cruz or Juan Diego Botto, don't ever watch this film. Possibly it is their worst interpretation. But La Celestina is more than these two players. All the supporting actors and actresses make a really good job, and it is always a pleasure to see Terele Pávez playing. The setting is good, the dresses are quite correct and the adaptation of this difficult book (novel or theater play or whatever the critics decide it will be) is, at least, acceptable.