Kiki, Love to Love

Some people are turned on by the oddest things. Other people prefer to come up with fancy names for such paraphilia. Kiki, Love to Love is a Spanish comedy composed of a number of short stories about people coming to terms with their or their partner's kinky quirks.

Of course sexual hangups are a staple of comedy and it seems that the Spanish are as reticent as English speakers when it comes to talking about sex. Some of the characters know what their kink is and just need to find some way of indulging it, others find out that they are kinky during the film. For instance, only when someone dies does one woman find out how much she is turned on by seeing her husband crying (Dacryphilia). She spends the rest of the film trying to make him cry again.

Despite the subject matter, the choice of kinks is unlikely to make most people squeamish and the body exposure doesn't go beyond young firm breasts and implied nudity. Overall the message is it is OK to be kinky and the final fiesta scene emphasises this.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

Living is easy with eyes closed

I'm far too young to be an original Beatles fan. Hence I am ignorant of the Beatles story and have only an average familiarity with Beatles songs, but that is more than enough knowledge to enjoy Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed.

Set in Spain during Generalissimo Franco's dictatorship, Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed is a beautiful movie almost cloyingly so. It is carefully crafted and perfectly shot. The characters are unambiguously nice or nasty. It is a nostalgic and simplistic look back at 1960s Spain.

The authoritarian side of 1960s Spain is illustrated by some small set piece violence, with a very modern revulsion by bystanders. The perpetrators include a nun and a priest. This is a country where priests are the heroes of both comedies and dramas in the cinema and the radio is full of Catholic messages and no pop music.

Well meaning and single minded Antonio anchors the film. He is a 40 something bachelor, English teacher and Beatles fan, who listens to Radio Luxembourg and uses Beatles lyrics in his English classes. Hearing that John Lennon is in Almería filming Richard Lester’s How I Won the War Antonio decides to drive there to discuss song lyrics with his hero. The two hitchhikers he acquires on route fill out the film.

Juanjo has run away from home after one too many run-ins with his policeman father. Beautiful, pregnant, but still slim, Belén has run away from a home for unwed mothers. Neither has a destination and Antonio tries to help them out and keep them safe on the short road trip. Belén turns out to be more than a passive girl with a pretty face; she has hidden talents to help out the guys. Feminists might take exception to a her as a character, but the male audience will be less picky.

Ian's rating 4/5

Blancanieves

Why would someone want to see a silent movie in 2013?

The novelty factor? Curiosity? Masochism? Ludditism?

Actually the masochism was entirely due to sitting in row M at the Paramount (rows M and beyond are not suitable for people with legs). It was curiosity to see a modern "silent" movie, and to see a Spanish take on the fairytale of Snow White, that got me to part with my money. As I hinted with the quote marks, Blancanieves is not entirely silent. It has sound track of music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. It follows the original silent movie techniques in terms of its almost square aspect ratio, black-and-white photography, over acting and intertitles. The intertitles were in English in the version shown at the Film Festival. The almost square aspect ratio and the 1920's setting sells this film as a silent movie and the over acting meshes well with the fairytale script.

In terms of 21st century mores, Snow White is one of the kinkiest of fairytales. In today's terms explain why it is OK for a teenage girl to move in with seven older men, or why it is OK to put a (presumably dead) girl's body on public display in a glass coffin, or let a random guy sexually molest her? This sort of behaviour is only acceptable in fairytales. In Blancanieves we are in 1920's Spain and Carmencita is the daughter of a widowed matador who marries the scheming Encarna (whose sexual proclivities normalise the kinkiness of the Grimm Bros plot). Carmencita's childhood and Encarna's torment of her take up rather more of the film than they should but the pace picks up a bit once the dwarves come on the scene. Here we feel we are on familiar territory but we should realise that this version of Snow White has not been following the Grimm Bros (or Disney) plots particularly closely and while Encarma's demise is satisfying, Blancanieves' fate deviates from expectation to remind us that this version of the story is for adults.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5

The Last Circus

Like hand puppets, clowns get a bad rep in films (e.g. Pennywise in It, the clown doll in Poltergeist, Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight) and The Last Circus is no exception.

The Last Circus starts during the Spanish Civil War with the Republicans/Loyalists bursting into a theatre during a performance for children to recruit men to defend Madrid from the Nationalists/Facists. Javier's father, a clown, joins the fight armed with a machete and is taken prisoner. After the war he and other PoWs are forced to work on the Valle de los Caídos (a memorial to the Civil War).

The story jumps forward to 1973 Javier is now a clown and joins a small circus. Naturally he falls for the beautiful Natalia, the acrobat and girlfriend of Sergio the head clown, a vicious tyrant, that everyone including the circus owner, is scared of. Natalia unexpectedly returns the affections of chubby, wimpy Javier, enjoying the risks of two-timing Sergio. This precipitates the wroth of Sergio on both of them. Finally the worm turns precipitating open warfare between the two clowns in which Franco himself becomes colateral damage. The final denouement takes place 150 metres up on the cross above the basilica in Valle de los Caídos.

If we were Spanish we might understand that Sergio and Javier represent Facist authoritarianism and democracy/humanitarianism respectively and Natalia is symbolic for Spain itself (the prize to be fought over and attracted to both).

Overall I'd class The Last Circus as somewhat surreal, very violent and overly dramatic rather than funny or horrific or a thriller.

Ian's rating 1.5/5