Josefina

JOSEFINA arrives as New Spanish cinema, a first feature from the director-writer team of prize winning shorts.

Roberto Álamo (QUE DIOS NOS PERDONE) appears as a put upon middle-aged Madrid prison guard who has to take the bus to work, when the aging car he's trying to nurse through another ten years breaks down on him. There he helps Almodovar lead Emma Suárez, visiting mother of an inmate, find her lost cell 'phone. This leaves him with her number and the pair make nervous contact.

After the pains they take to set this up convincingly, the casual way Álamo creates a fictitious daughter to justify his presence - a name from a wall graffiti, encountering a girl prisoner - is an odd change of pace.

The film wants us to feel the couple's pain and uses restraint, plausible detail (appliance repairs, the omelet delivered to the son with a slice missing) and uniformly excellent performances to do this.

The defeated leads, him alone in his dead parents' home, her caring for a paralysed husband and scraping a living doing clothing repairs, are not the standard popular movie leads, though we have been there before in the films of Mike Leigh and Tennessee Williams. Álamo's mother's porcelain ducks are uncomfortably close to a glass menagerie.

In the Dogma style, director Javier Marco has gone on record as wanting to avoid the artifices of editing and re-recorded sound and it's scenes like the sustained takes of the pair alone in the bus shelter which give the production its special quality. Apparently a parallel version with voice-over commentary to cover the long silences exists.

Historia depalmiana de observaciones a través de monitores de televisión, obsesiones, realidades virtuales y suplantaciones de personalidad, un buen guión al que quizá le falte más profundidad en la realización. ¡Excelente Interpretación de Emma Suárez!

Acceptable and emotional film featuring dramatic moments, humorous situations and some suspense , and for having great performances . ¨Josefina¨ depicts two middle-age characters : Juan (Roberto Alamo) a prison guard who silently observes every Sunday the visit of Berta (Emma Suárez) to her beloved son Sergio (Miguel Bernardeau) who's an inmate in prison . They are both solitary people , who take the same bus , and almost always at the same time, and the first begins to become obsessed with that mature woman , whom he controls from his workplace . To establish relations with Berta , he makes up a daughter who's also in prison. Juan finally manages to get close to her , he surprises himself by posing as another father and inventing a daughter inside jail : Josefina . The need to fill the void in which Juan and Berta live leads them to continue finding themselves beyond the reality that surrounds them.

Josefina (2021) is a simple, feeling story , with brief touches of humor , adding a well worked script , which contains two very fine outlined central characters . The central theme of the film turns out to be the loneliness of the contemporary society and the need of love and social relationships. A slight story about solitude in which our protagonists are Juan , who works in a security company in a Madrid prison , and Berta , who visits her son Sergio every day and including some essential secondary characters, such as Manolo Solo as his companion co-worker Rafael and the veteran Simón Andreu as a neighbour . The cast is completed by Pedro Casablanc who appears in two scenes who proves to be one of the best current Spanish supporting actors as Juan's boss and the young Miguel Bernardeau who plays the starring's son. The picture manages to maintain interest enough without the need for major trappings , including a surprising twist and going on until in the final part in which Berta realizes Juan's deception, reaching a disconcerting, but quite intelligent ending . The brief situations are resolved naturally with a couple of details that require the viewer attention.

The other strong point are the performances of the great starring duo : Emma Suárez as Berta the mother of one of the prisoners and Roberto Álamo as the lonely prson official , displaying splendidly the leading roles and providing natural and credible acting. They both do it very well , and their choice seems to me a success since I can't think of other better performers for this characters . In addition to the fact that their simple presence of this terrific actors on the main bill will be an attraction that will make the public come closer to see them. Without being a film with a great technical display , in fact the movie was shot in low budget , I would like to highlight the work of the cinematographer Santiago Racaj , without having to look for complex approaches , but rather playing with the luminosity that a project as simple as this debut film requires, which is easy to recommend for its simplicity, for shooting adequate environments. It displays atmospheric soundtrack including : Cessate, omai cessate (Cantata) Larguetto, RV 884 written by Antonio Vivaldi , arranged by Nerea Alberdi and Vanessa Garde . This results to be first feature film directed by Javier Marco, after many years shooting short films , the last one "A la cara (2020)", won the Goya award last year. The film is full of small details, in that script written almost perfectly by Belén Sánchez-Arévalo, with whom he has worked on all his short films, which is essential in this project, which makes the story catch you , and manages to keep interest without the need for many dialogues, despite the fact that the viewer is stunned of the outlandish characters . The film was presented in the new directors section of the last edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, where it was well received by the public and critics attending Zinemaldia. And getting several nominations and prizes , such as : Almería International Film Festival 2021 Winner Roberto Álamo , Nominee Best First Film : Javier Marco ; ASECAN 2021 Nominee Award Best Male Performance Manolo Solo ; Días de Cine Awards 2022 Nominee Best Spanish Actress : Emma Suárez Feroz Awards, 2022 , Nominee Feroz Award Best Actor in a Leading Role : Roberto Álamo ; Goya Awards 2022 nominee best new director Javier Marco , Nominee Best actress Emma Suárez ; San Sebastián International Film Festival 2021 Nominee New Directors AwardJavier Marco and Taipei Film Festival 2022 Nominee International New Talent Competition Grand Prize Javier Marco.