La source jaune

This is one of the more interesting Spanish films of the last few years and it is a debut film for the director!! Eduardo Noriega turns in one of his best post Abre Los Ojos roles. And the female lead is interesting as well. Cool and tense gritty and halluciogenic this film is worth the time spent watching it. I very much look forward to future efforts by the director.

Lola seeks to revenge the killing of her Spanish father and Chinese mother, murdered by the Madrid Chinese mafia. Aided and abetted by a somewhat timid, even repressed and introverted Sergio, who just happens to have an enormous archive of dossiers of thousands of Chinese in Madrid in his computer (!!!!), she manages to inveigle her way inside the organisation. The making of this film upset the local Chinese community, and even the Chinese Embassy lodged a court injunction to get it stopped on the grounds of racism. However a bit of common sense held out and the resulting film is not at all racist as far as I am concerned. Though the story might sound a little improbable, the team pull it off surprisingly well – especially during the first 75 minutes or so, as the finalé is not so very convincing.

Eduardo Noriega is wonderful: his performance oozes on-scene improvisation, such as stuttering with emotion and fright. In an interview-programme on Spanish RTVE he admitted that in some scenes he was literally improvising as the camera turned, but so authentically, brilliantly, and Miguel Santesmases had the good sense to leave it all in and not do any retakes. There is true blue actor's blood running through this young man's veins. Silvia Abascal as Lola turns in her first really serious performance, as her previous appearances in trivial TV series are not even worth mentioning; but, as an excuse maybe, every baby has to practice somewhere and it was not her fault that Narciso (Chicho) Ibáñez Serrador selected her for a show when she was only thirteen. In `La Fuente Amarilla', Abascal shows she has all the makings of an actress about to make truly great things in the immediate future. She was just turned twenty, six years younger than Noriega. She has the kind of face that just consumes the screen; her interpretational abilities are beginning to exude exquisite possibilities. The question is whether she can be offered the appropriate rôles in serious film-making. If this happens – and hopefully it will – look out Jennifer López, Penélope Cruz: make way for Silvia Abascal.

Full marks, too, for Santi Vega whose incidental music is just right and never intrudes.

The title of the film (The Yellow Fountain) is because according to Chinese legend it is where the dead go to drink.

Of course it is not destined to wide audiences and it is maybe for this reason that it is interesting. It is slow paced, not action packed. It is moving, with romance element and an Eduardo Noriega in a role that he was not used to before, and even after. He was rarely a shy man in his other films. This is a cute little crime drama full of poetry and Chinese culture. I don't kknow any other movie from this director and I suppose that's the only one that I will ever see from him. It's not an exceptional movie but worth watching. Noir and beautiful atmosphere in the same time. Good revenge plot to discover.