Breath of change The young man Juan, who works as a welder in a large mining industry and lives in a small seaside town near the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, comes to his sister Ana. Both Juan and Ana have something to hide from others and even from themselves, and this secret, which gravitates over them with the sword of Damocles, will soon burst out again, leading to devastating and tragic consequences.
For a very long and fruitful time of his career in Spanish cinema, one of the main macho and sex symbols of all Europe in general and Spain in particular, Antonio Banderas was able to fully and truly reveal the depth of his acting talent, playing in films, sometimes purely in second, albeit very bright and memorable roles for Pedro Almodóvar, who offered the actor to perform characters complex, ambiguous, and sometimes fringe, but at the same time being very attractive and vicious. Films "Labyrinth of passions", "Matador", "Tie me up!" and outstanding "Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown" not only deliberately exploited the external data of Banderas, but also revealed in it a strong dramatic actor, not afraid of risky and strange proposals. However, unfortunately, other directors, besides Almodóvar, Banderas failed to play anything worthwhile, and therefore many of his films of the Spanish period remained deeply and probably completely forgotten. One of these, forgotten and left out of the attention of film critics and the public works was the film of 1990 called “Against the Wind”, which became the first and last directorial work of the Spaniard Paco Perignan.
“Against the Wind” is a movie that is literally positioned from the very beginning as provocative and non-trivial. However, strictly speaking, Paco Perignan did not make friends with either provocation or non-triviality, and the film is perceived as far from being the most successful imitation of the cinematic studies of Pedro Almodóvar, Julio Medem, partly Luis Buñuel and even Carlos Saura. From the story of forbidden and violating all norms of habitual behavior of love, all-occupying and all-destroying passion, played out by heroes who voluntarily go against the wind, you expect much more than Perignan gives as a result to the audience and the most appropriate definition in relation to this leisurely and sometimes remaining with a mass of inexplicable mysteries tape becomes such a capacious word as “black”. The director masterfully managed to create in the film an atmosphere of hopelessness, depravity and complete meaninglessness of the existence of the main characters who grew up in far from the most attractive conditions for the formation of a personality, as a result, pushing the two main characters of the film on the dangerous path of blind passions, which usually do not lead to anything intelligible and positive. The film is simply acutely lacking intelligible Greek tragedy and traditional Spanish drive, but the director Paco Perignan prefers to stay unnecessarily detached, passive, only fixing and stating the facts, and the finale of the tape and leaves open and unsaid, unfinished.
All the disadvantages of simple directing and straightforward script, however, skillfully compensated in the film convincing performance of the actors, although here, of course, none of the personalities involved in the film could give their all. Antonio Banderas created a very ambiguous image of a young man, in which the inner demons are fiercely and mercilessly fighting among themselves and he cannot resist them and their vicious essence. And one of these demons is his sister Ana, who is very brightly and even far superior to his partner played the “red squirrel” of Spanish cinema and, accordingly, the muse Julio Medema Emma Suarez. Secondary characters, with the exception of a purely nominal and decorative hero Bruce McGuire, Petersen, and not remembered.
The film Against the Wind is a very chamber and, at first glance, quite provocative Spanish erotic drama, telling about an unconventional love triangle and the consequences of vicious passion. With the exception of the good acting work of the duo Antonio Banderas and Emma Suarez, full of beautiful landscape camera work by Gerard De Battista and the oppressive soundtrack from Ramon Farran, this film directed by Paco Perignan is nothing extraordinary, although someone, it is likely, and repel the excessive frankness of a number of his scenes and erased boundaries of moral assessments. Cinema that is relatively easy to look at, but just as easy to forget due to absolutely unrealized artistic potential.