In the Official Selection we also see ‘Winter Boy’ and ‘Il Boemo’. At the Velodrome, the new Paco León: ‘Rainbow’.
Before we get down to business and tell you about the films on the third day of the San Sebastian Festival, a bit of context. The third day of the event has been marked by controversy, that of Sparta. Directed by Ulrich Seidl, the film is the story of a pedophile and, although the filmmaker was going to come to defend the film from him, he has canceled at the last moment. “I have realized that my presence at the premiere could cast a shadow over the film’s reception. Now is the time for the film to speak for itself,” he said in a statement.
It all started with the publication of an article in The mirror in which they claimed that Seidl violated Romania’s labor regulations by exploiting the child actors in the film. In turn, it also appears in the article that the director hid the subject of the film from them and their parents. Seidl has denied these accusations, but the toronto international festival (TIFF) removed Sparta of your selection. The same has not happened in San Sebastián, a decision that its director Jose Luis Rebordinos has said: “only a court order establishing it would lead us to suspend a scheduled screening”.
Today has been the day of Sparta in the contest, but it is not the only title of the day: The Bohemian y Winter Boy also compete for gold shell and we talk to you about Rainbowthe new film by Paco León.
Sparta
Another San Sebastian, yet another controversy. The one of the 70th edition of the Spanish contest has starred Ulrich Seidl with his disgusting Sparta. The film by the Austrian director competes for the gold shell in Official Section and has as its protagonist Ewald (Georg Friedrich), a man who breaks off his relationship with his partner and returns to Romania trying to start over. In addition to taking care of his sick father, he buys an old school and reforms it to teach judo to the children of the area. Ewald is also a pedophile.
At his judo school, which he calls Sparta, Ewald plays with the children he has invited to join. He teaches them how to fight, but he also takes shirtless photos of them which he later gawks at in his darkened office. He showers naked in the common locker room while the boys are in their underpants and he dresses them up as Spartans. Ewald has a favorite boy whose father begins to distrust the protagonist and will turn the inhabitants of the area against him.
In SpartaEwald stops short of sexual abuse, but the simple fact of placing it in children’s spaces already causes repulsion and threat. And there is no need for children to be present: seeing him inside an empty and abandoned school – the one he later buys to create his judo school – already incites tremors. So when Seidl has Ewald treat his favorite child’s wound or watch him sleep, the nausea is not long in coming. The director places the viewer in a continuous state of alertness and anticipation, guessing the terrible thoughts that go through the protagonist’s head while, in turn, he tries to make you empathize with Ewald -with me he has not succeeded- placing him in a position of victim.
Holding back the vomit, it is true that Sparta It is a more complex proposal than it may seem at first glance and what Seidl achieves is interesting: arousing such horrendous feelings without doing “anything”. But on the other hand, it’s also a tremendously unpleasant, uncomfortable and disgusting experience. I still have a queasy stomach.
Winter Boy
Lucas he is only 17 years old when he sees how his life changes overnight. His father has died in a car accident and he, his brother and his mother have to move on with their lives while facing the tragic duel. Winter Boydirected by Christophe Honoré, is another title in the Official Selection.
The director of movies like The beautiful person (2008) y Live fast, love slow (2017); he has Lucas narrate his own story on camera. As if once and for all the young man dared to tell his mother what happened before, during and after the accident. Also what happened the days that he left his town to Paris with his brother for a change of scenery after his father’s funeral. His testimony is the engine of the film and Lucas’s experiences are shown as he decides to tell them: omitting some things and skipping others to return to them later at will.
Winter Boy it’s a ‘coming-of-age’ emotivo with which Honoré has wanted to pay homage to his own father, but the footage gets out of hand and it is a story with too many endings. To highlight: its impeccable leading actor Paul Kircher and Juliette Binoche, who plays her mother.
Rainbow
In Velodrome we see Rainbowthe new movie Paco Leon as a director who premieres Netflix on September 30th. It is not the first time for him, the actor has already shown his good work behind the cameras with other projects. In 2017 he presented at the San Sebastian Festival the magnificent series Madrid burns, of which he is also its creator together with Anna R. Costa. Nor should we forget the wonderful Kiki, love is made (2016) or the funny carmine or bust (2012), which was followed by the sequel carmine and amen (2014).
For RainbowLeón has been inspired by the popular story of The Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum. The story follows Dora (Dora Postigo), a young woman who lives with her father (Hovik Keuchkerian) in a small town and who has a special connection with music. When she turns 16, Dora decides to go look for her mother. The protagonist needs answers and, not finding them at home, she grabs her dog -just like Dorothy left Kansas with Toto- and begins the search for her mysterious parent. On her journey, she meets different characters -the counterparts of the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man- who will accompany her on her adventure.
The style that León has shown in his previous projects is in Rainbow high. It is the lion more lion: musical moments that could well be taken from a video clip, neon colors, drama that turns into comedy and cartoon characters. In the latter, the maximum exponent are Carmen Machi and Carmen Maura, who give life to two sisters and two powerful women connected to the protagonist. The scenes between Machi -with Agnés Varda hair- and Maura is the best she has Rainbow.
The film has an interesting start, with which León introduces the viewer to the codes of the story in which fantasy has a great metaphorical weight. But As Dora’s journey unfolds, the film loses interest and the plots of the secondary characters become insipid.. Only the mystery about the whereabouts of the protagonist’s mother manages to take root to keep the attention. In her apathetic ending, little matters anymore, and the climax, a festive and musical moment that seems destined to provoke energy, power and emotion, does not fulfill what she promises. If this is what lies at the end of the rainbow, I prefer to stay without knowing.
Andrea Zamora
The Bohemian
Josef Myslivecek, following his nickname of “il boemo” (the bohemian), he lived without restrictions, between scores and women. He was a dandy, who nevertheless ended his days ruined, disfigured by syphilis. Watching him is the filmmaker Petr Václav, who had already directed the documentary Confession of the Vanished alrededor de Mysliveček. En The BohemianVáclav is not so interested in the mechanisms of power that his rise betrays, nor in the events that structure his chronology (the years go by only like cartouches), but rather in what covers them… A range of powerful, rapturous emotions that refer us to the eternal themes of the opera: freedom, desire, love and death.
They will be the essential ingredients for a film that mixes rapturous arias with intimate diary, melodrama with ‘thriller’, and with comedy. The tape collects torrents of feeling, which it seeks in the closeness with the faces of its cast. The resulting distillate, confused and raised, vibrates in tune with opera, perhaps the genre that would best understand the life of the composer, intense, joyous and tragic like the great passions that are so much talked about.
Marion Borrull
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