Tapas

Here in Rijeka this month we've got a month of Spanish movies and on Friday night it was great choice to watch one Spanish movie. I love Spanish movies so I had great expectations from this one and first time directors Corbacho and Cruz did great job in my eyes. Their story is so real and very simple. We're actually watching 4 stories about lives of ordinary people in suburb of Barcelona. Lolo is owner of the main restaurant in town and his wife (cook in his restaurant) left him because he never really paid any attention for her, only for money. So Lolo hires Mao, Chinese who is a great cook. Raquel is middle-age woman who is very lonely (because her husband left her), so she keeps some sort of relationship with one man on internet. Doña Conchi and Don Mariano are one old couple, that are hit with news that Don Mariano is dying of cancer. Doña Conchi tries to make his life beautiful by selling low drugs to others. She gets money so she can buy him everything he needs. César and Opo are two teenagers who only wants to have some good time. Their conversations about sex, Bruce Lee and life are great. Main message of this movie is love. Cause love connects every character in this story.

"Tapas" is drama with elements of comedy and I really recommend it to everyone who wants to hear stories about life and love told in beautiful simplicity.

This film contains more of the real Spain than any other that I've seen. Funny, lovely, sweet and about real life. Best film to remember your country and the important things of life when you're away. Fantastic script, but gonna be really difficult to translate... If at any point you can understand this film in Spanish, you won't need to pass any real language test. Actors do a superb job as well. Photography shows the Barcelona out of design made of the small warm and sweet feelings. Maybe you won't experience that when you will visit the city or Spain but that's what make a difference...And I hope we won't loose it...Enjoy it!

I've just got back from watching this delightful film at the London Film Festival. I have to say that I was not expecting a lot as I had booked the tickets on a whim, But wow! was I glad I did.

This film is a show case of everything good about European cinema. Characters that the audience really care about with a gripping story which makes you laugh and cry, all carried by an everyday reality. Everything lacking from much of Hollywood's output.

Essentially the story covers the troubles of daily life of 3 generations, the young seeking sex, drugs and rock and roll. The middle aged repairing or seeking new relationships and the old saying goodbye. However what binds this story is the way the three generations interweave and rely on each other to get through.

I found this a really funny, touching film and a genuine must see.

This is a film that shows the different love relations between common people in a neighbourhood around a Tapas-bar. The film keeps you tied to your seat, just wanting to see what's happening next, and takes you closer to people's feelings, and recapitulation of concepts in front of extreme situations that alter their reality. From the old lady who sells drugs in the Tapas-bar, afraid of loosing her husband. The owner of the bar, whose wife runs away tired of him, and he prefers to hide his new situation, the woman in the local shop, that lives on her own and keeps a relationship throughout internet but falls for a physical relation with a younger men, all spiced with a pinch of Spanish humour, reality and sadness. The cast is pretty good, the new talent Rubén Ochandiano, or consecrated actors such as Angel De Andrés López, Elvira Minguez or the Argentinian Alberto De Mendoza. All in all, it's a good taste of Spanish cinema, besides the world known imagination of Almodovar.

José COrbacho is a Spanish humorist known for his gross humour sense and scatological jokes. People was frightened about the film he could do in his opera prima. Unexpectedly, he astonished everybody with this film. No comedy, no bunch of stupid jokes mixed together. We can find a correct mixture of little stories that happen in a workers town (the one the directors are from, l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, near Barcelona). Poor people with their fears and their hopes, their dreams and their desperation in order to survive in this life, always being able to face the world in an optimistic way. We can find the story of the old pair, that has to sell abuse drugs in order to pay the drags he needs for his cancer. The young pair whom only want to enjoy their lives, the barman that finds a new way of living when he contracts an Asian cooker. All these are little everyday stories, correctly filmed and with good acting. It has all the problems of the opera primas (lack of cash to spend, some scenes not totally thought) but it is a great surprise in Spanish cinema. If all his films are as good as this, I'll follow Corbacho's career as a director. A dramatic comedy of everyday stories, it is just a little film that wants to tell the existence of the "little unknown" people.