Quién te cantará

I saw this great film at cinema and wine festival in La Solana at The end of November 2018. The atmosphere created by The director was intense and absorBe You totally. I find Carlos Vermut a potencial genious director, creative and different, with an extraordinary sensibility. The actresses sublime. I highly recommend this film to author film lovers.

A famous retired singer decides she needs to resume her career due to financial problems. On her way to the stage for her triumphant return, she has an accident and wakes up with amnesia. To resolve the issue, Violeta, an anonymous imitator of the singer, appears to ensure the return of the great Diva.

The mother's permissiveness bothers me deeply, I don't know if it was due to a lack of strength to fight or if she simply gave up due to so much aggression on the part of her daughter, disgusting... A film with several layers, about the relationship between mother and daughters, about flawed dreams , the realization of them and the freedom to be yourself, necessary but commonly underestimated... Great film, graceful and strong photography, good, intense performances, slow but favorable pace...

I am speechless literally. I want to like it but I can't; it could have been better structured, the track seems inaccurate to me, messy at times. It has the elements and potential to have been a masterpiece,but there's a moment when it loses its point. Some hints are beautifully made, but some others are incomprehensible... And pointless.

What was the point of Violeta telling Lila to call herself? What was the significance of the dream? Interesting, but jerky plot . Well-performed. Needs second or third watch to make any sense out of the story.

'Quién te Cantará'/'Who will Sing to you' is essentially a film about four women: the two main characters and the two major supporting ones. But it does not strike me as being particularly a "women's picture", nor, thankfully, one that is railing against "the Patriarchy" or similar.

Lila is a former pop singer who stopped performing ten years ago, following the death of her mother. Now (sporting a desperately unflattering hairstyle) she lives in a beautiful beach house that is financed by album royalties. But those royalties are drying up so a comeback tour is planned. Disaster strikes when, just a few months before the tour, Lila "faints in the water" on the beach and develops amnesia.

Violeta is a huge fan of Lila. A talented songwriter, she gave up hope of a showbiz career when her daughter was born. Now working as a bartender in a karaoke bar, she finds some small pleasure in impersonating Lila's performances in YouTube videos. The real, amnesiac, Lila sees one of these videos and dispatches her manager Blanca to secure Violeta's services to teach her "how to be Lila".

After Lila, Violeta and Blanca, the fourth woman is Violeta's daughter Marta, and it is with her the film has its biggest flaw. Marta, a young adult, is such a one-note villain she would not be out of place in a pantomime. She is lazy, has no sense of responsibility, boasts to friends of sexual encounters with their boyfriends and repeatedly uses threats of self-harm to get Violeta to do her bidding. With the exception of the businesslike Blanca, none of the characters are particularly realistic in their behaviour - but Marta takes it to Olympic levels. Although she is allowed a couple of redeeming scenes - we see her apologise to her mother for a tantrum that included smashing a treasured signed Lila album - she is an unbelieveable soap opera villainess.

Director/screenwriter Carlos Vermut has made this a fairly arty film - there are several lengthy shots of people doing nothing and a pair of thick-soled stiletto heels are often placed prominently in shot as some sort of recurring theme. But the story is interesting and holds the viewer's attention - even if he does find himself sighing in exasperation whenever the hysterical Marta appears onscreen.

Seen at the 2018 London Film Festival.