El verano que vivimos

An unusual piece of obituary at a newspaper office in Galicia (Spain) draws a young female intern into a journey to explore events leading back to summer of 1958. The young journalist tracks down an amazing love story of Lucía Vega and Gonzalo Medina, an architect who travels to a Spanish coastal town to construct a wine cellar for his friend Hernán Ibáñez.

This is an intense story of love and betrayal with enthralling dramatic sequences. Captivating music by Federico Jusid shall keep you immersed and entertained throughout. I find this film a mature piece of romantic drama. Casting is fabulous and performance by Blanca Suárez is magnificent.

I have to point out to rauural, the one and only reviewer who wrongfully abused this movie without even seeing it. This is a Spanish movie, not a French like what he blindly sneered at. It's beautifully shot in the Galician, area, an autonomous community in Spain's northwest, is a verdant region with an Atlantic coastline. The love story happened in a huge local vineyard. We used to see movies telling romances happened in the French wine country, but this movie provided us with a totally different triangle love story that happened in the wine country of Spain. The actors performed quite well, handsome and pretty, a completely different outcome against what that rauural reviewer said in his(or her) 28 Feb 2021 review. Again, even I don't speak Spanish language, I at least know it's not a French movie and, you can easily find English subtitles on the web.

It's a beautiful love story, but it was really challenging for me. It does not follow the typical Hallmark movie plot line for romantic dramas.

The heart ache is painful at times. As an American, I always want to see the characters escape their situation, become the hero, or get to the happy ending. Without spoiling it, I'll just say this story challenged me emotionally. It's hard to accept certain outcomes in life.

I personally grew to love Lucia. She's a classic beauty and so subtle. Her family tradition was that she'd marry the owner of the other vineyard, to combine the wealth of the two wealthy families. I desired to see her be free and happy.

For much of the story, Gonzalo (her secret love) has a dark, sad, and hollow facial expression. His mood is so dark, I questioned whether he was going to turn out to be the bad guy. My lesson here is that people who appear dark and depressed may have a very deep longing for something beautiful.

Scenery - Beautiful northern Spain.

Time period - Most of the movie is set in the flashbacks in 1958, which made it interesting but it was only a subtle part of the story.

Age appropriate for adults only. There are a few scenes with intimacy and also several violent scenes.

The Scenery was spectacular, the acting, wonderful, and I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

The movie runs without an intelligent and measured creative work. Has a great production, great actors but imho is a continuous demonstration of lack of creative direction, just a good technical jobs becomes in a nice wrapping for a quick consumption product.

I am not an author cinema's fan. I am not a sybarite. I am not enjoy a French film from unknown actors and director in OST without subtitles.

Photography is beautiful, although colors are way generally too saturated, searching with too much effort Instagram looks all the time (or Lalaland effect in a pair of scenes). As I said, great production, locations are marvelous and show a part of Spain I don't know and I became willing to know.

The cast is very interesting, few of the quality sparks in the film proceed or are related to the actors and actresses. Blanca Suarez and Javier Rey characters share great connection moments, and some others show they are over the general creative quality of the results. Nerveless these good tools, actors direction are very poor, with over response, super drama and lack of general tone. Suarez do a great job transmitting just with her glance, but as I said, just sparks in a storm.

The script is horrible. Using flashbacks from a recent past to a further one, pretends involve the viewer but just dislocate and cuts the action every time does one time jump. Lack of sense, logic, awful and forced characters responses are common all along the movie. Time movement perception is compressed and altered in such way that makes hard to believe most of scene situations. And main events in the plot are completely mad and illogical. Just a shallow guideline review reveals big logical holes for such and intense life changing and allegedly passionate events, Plenty of clichés again and without further development of personality or characters.

Music is a good surprise in certain moments but is not connected with the action. Beautiful but without purpose or anchorage. Sometimes is too loud related to what is happening in the scene.. common to recent netflix Spanish successful productions as The cable girls.

As I said, cast, production and photography are good enough to query the director's labor. How many resources are wasted and how many restraints wre involved are not in my sight to evaluate, but I can talk about the results. No way these talk good about his work. Photography, montage, script, actors direction... Shots and framing maybe are good individually but globally seems a videoclip or a showreel for the directors capability, not related to a global sense for the movie. It just hurts to write, I am not an angry hater, just feeling the opposite, a light sadness and deception due to there are enough beautiful things to do a great movie and the results are too far of that.