Mysterious mosaic Deficiency of something important is not lack of opportunity. If the productions of the Hollywood mainstream along with the trends of world film festivals have turned your head or you are just ready to see the human nature brought to mind, immersed in the rainbow shine of dreams, get acquainted with the amazing world of Fernando Leon De Aranoa. Do not be afraid of the lack of high awards in the piggy bank of this director - not everything is measured by gold and silver standards, and immersion in the unknown promises to be easy and exciting, with interesting discoveries and a pleasant humorous flare.
Whether there is a reason for happiness in a girl without a penny in her pocket, who moved to the other hemisphere of the Earth in search of a better share, is not immediately clear. Attractive Spain, although historically close to sultry Argentina, is in no hurry to open a hot embrace for Marcela and her boyfriend Nelson. The only escape from poverty for them is the flower business, but Europe is far from South America and market conditions are different. You have to fight for every buyer, and someone else is trying to fool around the finger. The situation is aggravated when the couple buys a refrigerator in installments, for which there are not enough funds, and Marcela gets a nurse to an elderly sick man named Amador (Selso Bugallo), who has a living daughter, but clearly doomed to spend his last days alone. His main hobby is collecting puzzles. The time of their communication was short, but it was enough for Marcela’s life to change forever.
Throughout the history of cinema, the difference between real and fictional manifestations of reality, including the concept of death, if erased, then not much. No matter how embellished the significance of the fateful hour, people’s attitude towards it is unlikely to change much, unless a real apocalypse takes place in nature or science. The use of the directors of the presence on the screen of dead bodies, it must be said, is far from original - since the time of Hitchcock, they are, at best, turned into one of a number of subjective forms of mental pathology of other people, at worst - animated by a variety of means, creating another Frankenstein, zombies and other necronymity. The hero of Fernando Leon De Aranoa also dies, but the director’s plan here is aimed at humanizing objective and time-tested human representations.
The difference between what audiences are used to and what happens in De Aranoa's film is directly related to Marcela. First of all, she appears to be a strong enough woman, able not to panic at the sight of a deceased person, albeit not a native. But almost nothing is known about Marcel herself, she says little in the film and appears to be a person who can easily have his own “secrets”. Her decision to stay in someone else’s home and each subsequent act of staying there seem to be designed to prove the rightness of those who from the very beginning suspected a medical topic here. Fortunately, life has not yet made Marcela sick and her choice can be regarded as saving her healthy future and, of course, the future of her child. And De Aranoa’s advantage over others is precisely in his ability to balance clearly on the verge of the real and the unreal, the highest moments of sadness and joy, guided by such an atypical confession of love for life that any doubt can not be interpreted in his favor. Human life is indeed a mosaic, but here each further element is for the time being unknown, created in the process of existence. “The worse, the better,” De Aranoa classically answers us and applies this old formula to his plot.
Having built a transparent wall between the material and the spiritual, which turned out to be stronger than any steel, De Aranoa only turns to the religious topic a couple of times and does it from the standpoint of the equal responsibility of God to the world and people to themselves. We learn that the clouds are designed to hide God’s shame for their actions, but Marcel has a lot to blame herself for. She prays in church, but the clouds in the sky seem to suggest that it is not her who should be ashamed, but the one who put her in such conditions. All this, on the one hand, evokes mixed feelings, on the other - you ask the right question: what made Marcel believe Amador enough to make his strange words about the child a pillar in a controversial from all points of view enterprise? Something tells me that the key to the solution must be found in Marseille itself. The image of this heroine turned out to be mysterious, but very interesting, including thanks to Magali Soller. Comparing her images in Amador and the film Milk of Sorrow, shot a year before him, which made a lot of noise in Europe, I can say that this actress has great opportunities, she really can change beyond recognition. Yes, excessive chatter on the screen is not her style either.
The painting “Amador” is one of those that in all respects are designed to stay out of the trendy format of festivals, but in this case it is hardly a failure. Obviously, in the eyes of gray-haired masters, De Aranoa is too far in his originality from the familiar frames. But for the audience there are enough magical elements to, after the heroine, place them in their places and build a mosaic according to their own reason and feelings.