La Mirada: Jewels Of The Spanish Cinema

The Sunday Age

Sunday March 30, 2008

Tom Ryan

La Mirada: Jewels Of The Spanish Cinema

At ACMI from Thursday to April 13

The opening night film at this year's festival is Jaime Marques Olarreaga's stunning directorial debut, Ladrones/Thieves (4/5, 2007, 103 minutes, pictured), the tale of a young pickpocket (Juan Jose Ballesta) and the girl (Maria Valverde) who becomes his partner. Paying due homage to Robert Bresson's masterful Pickpocket (1959), and displaying the same fascination with its youthful leads as one has become accustomed to in the films of Gus Van Sant (Elephant, Paranoid Park), it also introduces a theme prominent in another of the films I've been able to preview. As the pickpocket routinely stalks his quarry, Olarreaga's camera watches with him, making us voyeuristic passengers, at the same time as it's watching him, inviting us to also become compassionate observers of his loneliness. The camera appears to be on a similar quest in Jose Luis Guerin's striking second feature, In the City of Sylvia (4/5, 2007, 85 minutes), as it follows the daily routines of a young artist (Xavier Lafitte) wandering the cafes and footpaths of an unnamed city (played by Strasbourg) in search of his muse. Using dialogue sparingly, and relying on the surroundings for its soundtrack, it's indebted to Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), another of Bresson's haunting masterworks. Guerin's concern to lend a universality to the story is suggested by his choice not to give names to the characters - they're simply Him and Her, just as it was only Ladron and Ladrona in Thieves. He's also since made an essay-film, Unas fotos in the City of Sylvia...and Other Cities, reworking the same material. For next year's program please.

Also screening: Jaime Rosales' boldly innovative La Soledad (3/5, 2007, 127 minutes) and Iciar Bollain's routine but engaging female private-eye tale, Mataharis (3/5, 2007, 94 minutes).

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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