Tierra

I liked this film a great deal. Medem is a wonderful director, who can take you for more of a ride with plot alone than most other directors can do with special effects: keep your brain in high gear to follow this story.

Among other twists, we are left to wonder just how much is Angel's hallucination and how much is really occurring. The only fault I can find with the film is that this is not left even more open: I'd rather not know that there is any particular reason to doubt Angel's sanity.

I loved the notion of an exterminator (named Angel, no less) sent to kill off an epidemic of burrowing insects that change the flavor of the local wine, even though he rather likes the altered taste, as do at least some of the locals. I also felt that the theme of a man being drawn carnally to one woman and equally strongly (but less physically) to another, while it has been explored often -- too often -- has seldom been explored better or in a manner more appropriate to the cinema.

Settle back with a glass of Rioja and watch it. Maybe twice.

A man with psychical problems comes to a little town to solve farmer's grape and wine troubles. He falls in love at a time with a married woman and a young girl, and he gets in troubles with Angela's husband. Julio Medem show us how complicated can be our lives, even if you are in a little and quite place, and how a choice can change your whole life.

Julio Medem's 'Tierra' has that same feel of surrealism, poetry and magic that his other works, namely 'Vacas', 'Los Amantes del Circulo Polar', 'La Ardilla Roja'. His films are a genre of their own. Medem has penned a solid screenplay and done a fine job of showing it on screen. He often works on a broad campus.

The visuals are very simple yet the way Medem and his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe capture them makes them look extraordinary. The film is set in a remote Spanish countryside surrounded by simple earthy brown landscape. Yet the moving images beautifully capture the richness of texture, mood, emotion, sound, symbolism and dialogue. Alberto Iglesias's score is equally spellbinding. Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Karra Elejalde, Silke and Nancho Novo are in top form. Gómez does one of his best works here.

I'll refrain from mentioning anything about the story because, like most of Medem's films, this one is more worthy experiencing rather than just hearing.

The film tells the story of a technician who comes to a little village to solve the problem of the local wines, they taste to soil, in that task he will find several charachters that will start to enter wildly in his life. To me this one is the most discret film in the career of Julio Medem, a genial creator. Even if the film follows the general guidelines of the rest of the filmography of Medem (symbolism and psychologicalism), it lacks of the potence to attract so much the audience.

It is a beautiful movie (as most of Medem's movies are), visually absolutely stunning, with very good actors and a very human(istic) plot. It sometimes gets complicated, sometimes it does not make too much sense, but at the end it does not really matter. Probably the best way to enjoy this film is to let the images guide you into their dizzying magical world and you will then feel deep inside what it is all about.