Category Archives: Spanish Film Festival 2023

A road trip for old people, with a tango couple and their musician joining together after thirty years to complete some unfinished business between them. It’s a gentle comedy, a bit like a Michael Caton movie for Australians. Although does Argentina not have any other male actors other than Dario Grandinetti? He was also in A Singular Crime.

This is set in 1980 (as the film tells us several times because John Lennon has just been shot) in Rosario, Argentina. It’s during the military dictatorship, and the military has infiltrated the police force. Under the judicial system in Argentina, the judge and his clerks investigate crimes directly. In this case, which teeters on the edge of corruption, the clerks, Rivas and Torres- both with PhDs in law – find the police/military too quick to resort to torture in investigating the disappearance of a wealthy Syrian playboy-businessman. I must confess to becoming totally confused between the two law clerks, both of whom had wimpy 1980s style moustaches. The plot was of less interest to me than the political situation of uneasiness. The title in English is ‘A Singular Crime’ but the original Spanish title ‘Un Crimen Argentino’ is more appropriate because although crime is pretty much the same everywhere, the context is not.

Sorry- another trailer video in Spanish (I can’t find a subtitled one)

I really enjoyed this movie. Set in 1976, as Spain is making its transition to democracy after Franco’s death, sixteen year old Bea joins a collective of young feminist women working to secure women’s rights to an abortion. She lives with her mother, who works as a cleaner/housekeeper for a wealthy family, and when she accompanies her mother to assist her, she meets Maider, the granddaughter of the family, who is somewhat older than Bea, and with problems of her own. She falls in love with her and plans to go away with her, but she is torn by her love for her mother, who will be left alone if she leaves. There are so many layers to this film: Bea’s growing realization of her attraction to women; the political situation of the late 1970s in Spain; the struggle for legal abortion and its effects on women who cannot access one; courage; and the mother-daughter relationship.

This film is set in Alcarràs, Catalonia where an extended family is evicted from their farm because the owner wants to install solar panels. The use of the farm and its harvest had been promised back in the Spanish Civil War, when the farming family saved the life of the landowner, but now that his grandson is in charge, the promise is broken. They are allowed to have one last summer harvest, and this is the story of that harvest. The ultimatum splinters the family, some of whom take on jobs installing the panels, while others protest the takeover of rich agricultural land. It was beautifully filmed, but a bit slow. Interestingly, none of the actors had been in films previously, which resulted in a very natural, but rather stilted movie.

(Sorry about the lack of English subtitles in this video)

It’s late June, and so it’s time for the Spanish Film Festival again. This was the first film I have seen in the 2023 season, and I loved it. It’s called ‘Today We Fix the World’ and it’s about a man who finds out the child he has been raising for 9 years might not be his son after all. They then set out to find the real biological father. It was very well acted, funny without being corny, and very satisfying. I saw it with English subtitles. I think that it might be on Netflix.