hof-4

The action begins in Berlin in summer. Sasha, a Frenchwoman in her late twenties lives there with her husband Lawrence. Sasha works in an art shop doing stencil prints. Lawrence aspires to be a writer and makes a living as a translator.

One day Sasha collapses walking home, is taken to hospital and dies. The subsequent action extends to three summers and two more cities, Paris and New York, with short interludes in the villa that Sasha's parents own in Annecy, fronting the lake with mountains as backdrop. The subject is how Lawrence deals with tragedy with the help of an ever-changing group of friends and of Sasha's sister, Zoé.

We are witnesses of many conversations in somebody's apartment, bars, and walks in the night sometimes remembering Sasha. Finally, the moment arrives where the protagonist will wonder if it is not an insult to the memory of his dead wife to go out with someone else.

I did not particularly like this movie. It looks as its characters with the cold detachment of a scientist watching insects. Except for Zoé, what we know the first time about a personage is the same we know at the end (for instance, there is no hint on the relationship of Sasha and Lawrence but a short initial scene). But then, perhaps these were the director's intentions. At any rate, the movie keeps your interest.

As the film opens, the unnamed sixtyish mother (widowed long ago) has just retired from her job as a church secretary. As a sort of celebration she plans a reunion with her two daughters and a son in the family's summer house on the Baltic coast. Daughters show up but not son. He has been living in Hong Kong for years, estranged from the family. The demonstrations against the government, he alleges on the phone, have caused disruptions, among them the closure of airports.

Mother decides to visit her son in Hong Kong, and arranges with him access to his apartment. Things don't work exactly as expected, her son is not there and she has no choice but to wait for him to appear. She visits a therapist he has seen, following a paper she finds in the apartment. In the course of her visit to Hong Kong she realizes she has a facility to communicate with people not in her comfort zone; a young woman in a shared hotel room, the manager of his son's apartment building, an astrologer/card reader that informs her that, from the five elements she excels in water but lacks in wood, a questionable statement since she lives in the Black Forest.

This is it. Not much happens on screen and the telling of the tale becomes slow at times, but the movie has some notable moments. One is the depiction of Hong Kong, the titanic but somewhat oppressive architecture where wast apartment towers sit close to each other competing for natural light and crowds throng the streets at every hour of the day and night, demonstrations or not. Worth a watch.

Pedro is a young architect having no success with the adoption and financing of his projects. He lives in Madrid with his uncle Luis, a physician equally unemployed. One day Pedro receives news that his grandfather Paco has died in the small town in Cantabria were he resided. Paco, as many other Cantabrians made his career and fortune in the New World, in his case as an architect in Mexico. He also constructed an art nouveau palace in his town, fronting the town square.

Pedro's inheritance consists of two cows and a donkey. He and Luis hitchhike their way to the town, surrounded by the verdant hills and valleys of Cantabrian landscapes with majestic mountains as backdrop. Both Pedro and Luis become fascinated by the local characters, especially Paula, granddaughter of Paco's best friend and Jana, a long ago girlfriend of Paco who is convinced that Paco left a hidden fortune and tries to pump Pedro for information that he doesn't have.

This is it. The script is rather predictable and some characters have a bit of cliché in them, Also, some scenes (involving Jana's antics as a witch) are not as funny as they could be, but all in all the movie is entertaining and easy to view. As a bonus we get a glimpse of the landscapes of Cantabria, mixing the spectacular with the idyllic. The title translates to In Another Place, but the copy available in the rental services is titled The Valley of Love.