Palmiers dans la neige

I loved the role of Mario Casas as Killian but I wish he'd played the role of old Killian himself!

What a fantastic film with excellent cinematography. A great history lesson too. Beautiful storyline and deeply moving. Thak you so much for this film, I recommend it to EVERYONE.

It's a long film but sort of needs the time to get around all that goes on in the film. Slowly worked and well crafted, it's not the same film as the English patient but certainly had that similar feel to it. This film becomes hard to watch at times due to the hardened moments that we see unfold. I didn't know anything about this film prior to just putting it on so it was a nice surprise in enjoy it.

This is a great movie! However, I had to force myself to watch it until the end because of the English dubbing/voiceover did not align properly and match the characters emotions and etc. You have Africans depicting strong emotions but the dubbing is this monotoned all white American voice w/ no emotion. It doesn't match. Even the captioning was off. I would've preferred to watch the original version and select English captioning.

The tells the story of Kilian (Mario Casas); a young white worker that on 1958 arrives to Equatorial Guinea with his older brother to work (as a white manager) on a cacao plantation; and fell in love with a local native (not acceptable by the natives and due to the political turmoil become something forbidden).

In the present time; Kilian's niece decides to visit the place to find out information about her family history; so the tale become structured as a mix of flashbacks.

If the intention was criticism on Spanish colonialism; the movie limits the attack to a few bad seeds on both sides and the obvious cruelty (locals were paid but punished like slaves) is mostly diluted. In fact the portrait of the liberated Equatorial Guinea is far more depressing and cruel than the old one. The movie seems to say "you left us and see what you got into".

While the technical aspects of the movie are excellent (camera work, FX, action and/or violent scenes, sound effects), the editing somewhat confusing. If you do not pay attention to some names you will get lost in many characters relations.

There are also a few unnecessary scenes that make the movie lag.

The acting department is reasonable but on the white side; nobody really shines. On the native (black) side, performances are stronger and passionate even when characters do not have a lot of development.

As many European productions; there are some violent and plenty of nudity and (moderated) sex scenes. In Spain the movie was consider PG but like most of Europe; but I am pretty sure it will get an R in USA.

In brief; it is an interesting (but not perfect ) movie worth a look