Solas

Nowadays it is not so easy to find a film that hits directly your heart and sentiments. Benito Zambrano gives an opportunity to recover all those sentiments that are well hidden in your subconscious.

Carmona is a small town too close to Seville to have a real identity and is the frame for a difficult and impossible relationship between a daughter, mother and father. Zambrano shows how difficult is to grow up in this outcast and bit farmer town with the leit-motiv of these three characters that join back together due to the father's illness. The father is marked rude and impolite, used to hit the wife or the daughter to show his total dominance and authority. The wife was totally subjected to this situation and the opportunity to find some understanding and heat with their neighbour is accepted with detachment by her. This side relationship with a lonely man brings back love to this sad and destroyed family. The daughter is even worse, alcoholic and in love with a truck driver who does not care of her pregnancy.

The loneliness of the void with a breach of optimism is well expressed in this simple but very effective and straight film.

Rating: 7/10

Unfortunately rather overlooked as this film came out the same year as Almodóvar's 'Todo Sobre mi Madre' which went on to reach fame and glory. However, if you liked Almodóvar's excellent drama you will also like 'Solas'. The two films have certain similarities inasmuch that also in 'Solas' the accent is very much on strong characterisation, profound human feelings, though perhaps a little less intense here than in Almodóvar's film.

Ana Fernández is magnificent, playing just right the rather confused, unlucky thirty-five year old young woman a bit given to alcohol, not overplaying her part; María Galiana as her mother shows even at her age that she has come from good theatre, as no less does Carlos Álvarez-Novoa as the lonely neighbour. Benito Zembrano - as Almodóvar - , not only directs his film but is also responsible for the script, which is truly magnificent, especially taking into account certain Andalucian styles of speech. The Andalucian accent may at times cause a bit of a problem if you know Spanish a fair amount and watch this film without any subtitles. Try it, anyway: it is well worth the effort.

An excellent piece of drama which certainly deserves more recognition than it has got. Curiously both films end with a remarkably similar dedication at the end: 'A mi madre; a todas las madres' - To my mother; To all mothers.

Many thanks to Benito Zambrano for this beautiful delineation of human dilemmas humanely faced. Maria Galiana, as an elderly Spanish woman caught in the trap of a very bad marriage, but able to maintain her generosity and ability to love, is superb and inspiring. Her grown daughter, played with passion by Ana Fernandez, is more sophisticated and bitter. She has allowed herself to be used by a man, not unlike her unfeeling father, and her protrayal makes us sympathize with her, particularly when she finds she's pregnant and the man refuses to help her. And then there is the daughter's neighbor, played by Carlos Alvarez-Novia...a lonely old man with only his amazing dog for companionship. How he and the mother establish a tender, but "proper" relationship is a piece of rare and subtle film-making. I see no similarity between Zambrano's movie and the work of Mike Leigh (who apparently inspired him). Real people, yes, but the values demonstrated by Zambrano far surpass, in my estimation, those of Mike Leigh. My highest recommendation to anyone interested in a film that has soul, without sentimentality or grossness.

"Solas" spends its 100 minute run digging deep into the character of Maria (Fernández), an attractive 35 year old brittle pessimist who bears the scars of childhood abuse at the hands of her father, drinks too much, and works as a janitor. A somber, plodding, plaintive character study, "Solas" fleshes out its small ensemble of characters well, illuminating the dark corners of Maria's hopelessness with an unlikely combination of her visiting mother's quiet courage and the friendship of an old man in a neighboring apartment. An award winning film hailed by the critics and an exemplar for American Indie makers, "Solas" will appeal most to more mature audiences into Europix. Those who enjoy this film may want to check out "El Abuelo" (1998). (B)

Solas (1999)

A purely effective entry into the private worlds of several very lonely people in contemporary Spain. Tenderly filmed, acted with understated and honest passion, and written in a way that makes you believe it.

And that's the point. You really care about first the lonely old woman, then increasingly about her troubled daughter, and finally about the old man who is a neighbor living alone. What some people need, other people need to give. But they don't always know it, or if they know it they still resist, trapped by promises made or by convention.

It's an interesting dose of reality that there are a couple of truly bad people here, as well, both men, both abusive in different ways to their woman. One, an older man in the hospital, remains bitter even as his health declines, and he reveals in a key passage that what he cares about is whether he was the kind of man society and tradition had expected him to be. Nothing else. It's sad, but not as tormenting as the younger selfish man who almost glories in his selfishness.

What makes the movie strike deep, though, is how the women put up with this. We aren't sure if it is because they too are caught up in society's traditions, or if they have some emotional need to be abused, however that gets started. But what we are sure of is how familiar this sounds--if not in our own relationships, at least in those around us, somewhere.

As powerful as this movie is, it is never overpowering, and never sentimentally driven (until, alas, the very end, which is a disappointing but understandable wrap up). What works so well is how subtle the emotional highs and lows are. It's all written and directed by people who understand what is going on in life, beyond the deceptions of the silver screen.