Mensaka

You hit play and you know right away what it's about. Not from the plot, but from the feeling: young people, lost, doing what they can, surrounded by smoke, noise, and a hunger for something they can't name. Mensaka doesn't explain, it just lets you watch - and that's what makes it special.

It all feels improvised, even if it isn't. The characters don't sound scripted; they talk like people you actually knew. Crappy jobs, short relationships, cheap beer nights and moral hangovers. You watch it and see yourself, even decades later.

Tristán Ulloa, Laia Marull and Gustavo Salmerón are perfect. They're not playing stars, just people. And in a Spanish film from '98, that alone was a small miracle. Nobody's trying to please; they just exist, breathe, get things wrong.

It's rough, dirty, alive. The camera moves like one of them, lost but curious. And the music - somewhere between rock and disillusionment - holds it all together. It's not perfect, but it's got soul. And that's something you don't see much anymore.

This film is a somewhat disjointed affair for those of us who like our movies to be rational and to have either a happy or sad ending. This film is very direct and not very nice to the audience in some ways. But it is believable. As in real life, people don't have either happy or sad endings, they just have endings. At first, I found the film's characters to be simply one screwed up person after another floundering about and going nowhere. Finally, upon reflection, I found the film to be a study of what is truthful about a culture based on drugs and rock and roll. There are a lot of endings in this lifestyle that are what they are, neither sad or happy, just there. The film does not always explain why these people are where they are. I believe we are to assume they are where they are due to the lifestyle with its inherent flaws.

The film is quite creative in its editing from scene to scene. The acting is all first rate. You really, after a few minutes, really do care about these people even though they all appear to be messed up in one way or the other. The film left me somewhat resigned to the truth that people can not be changed, that we all have to face the results of the decisions we make.

This one deals with a group of friends who form a Rock band called Septima Invasion, but they have a bad and unfortunate life . Then a powerful discographic agency offers them to sign up a multinational in exchange of turning their music into popular and catching songs . They are David : Gustavo Salmeron, who works as a sender to survive and lives with his girlfriend Bea : Laia Marull , Javi : Tristan Ulloa, and Fran : Adria Collado. As the peculiar lives of these young people are interwoven themselves, adding other roles as the drug-seller played by Guillermo Toledo or the junkie Lola Dueñas who falls for Javi. Meanwhile , upper-class Javi : Tristan Ulloa doesn't wants to work and has problems with his wealthy parents and a druggie adolescent sister . And Fran : Adria Collado has crushes on other girls and Natalia : Maria Esteve is really jealous of his betrayals . Besides, Fran is tempted by a Disco multinational to undertake a career as a commercial singer.

Based on the homonymous melodramatic novel about Madrid youngsters and their vital frustration by writer Jose Angel Mañas and script by Luis Marias , this is a melodrama formed by various interwined stories, though they have not much interest. This Mensaka has not the moralizing and anarchist charge of Historias del Kronen also written by Mañas and director Monxto Armendariz adapted in 1995 with Juan Diego Botto and Jordi Molla. Film debut of director Salvador Ruiz who delivers a particular soap opera with interesting issues , describing the youthful of the 90s and their twisted love stories. The cast is pretty good, giving nice performances with special mention for Tristan Ulloa as the desperate but honorable Javier who seeks redemption helping a druggie magnificently performed by Lola Dueñas and Laia Marull as the fiancee who deceives her boyfriend with a discographic producer : Gines Garcia Millan. Support cast is frankly fine, such as Alejo Sauras, Guillermo Toledo, Myriam de Maeztu, Elvira Lindo, Tony Zenet, Silvia Casanova, Janfri Topera and many others .

It has an attractive musical score by Pascal Gaigne and accompaining Rock and popular soundtrack from notorious bands and singers as Rosendo Mercado, Enrique Urquijo , Andres Calamaro, Los Rodriguez, Los Secretos , Bloqueo, Septima invasion. Colorful and atmospheric cinematography by Teo Delgado who has photographed a number of successes : Pantaleon y las visitadoras, Juego de luna, Castillos de carton, Zapping, Flores de otro mundo, Tension sexual no resuelta , Bajo la piel . The motion picture was decently directed by Salvador Garcia Ruiz. It won Goya awards : best adapted script and nominee best new actor :Tristan Ulloa. Turia Award : Best first work to Salvador Ruiz. Toulouse CineEspaña Festival was winner : best actor to Tristan Ulloa, Lola Dueñas. And Spanish Union Actors 1999 winner to Lola Dueñas. Salvador Ruiz is a good writer and director as cinema as TV. As he has directed nice films as Castillos de Carton, El otro barrio with Willy Toledo and Voces de la noche with Tristan Ulloa and Laia Marull. In television he directed episodes of known series as La Catedral del Mar, Carlos I emperor, Isabel , Gran Reserva, 14 Abril La Republica, La Señora , Hospital Central, and Lobos

For me that is the best film this year in Spain. The actors are great, and this history is so real, talking about the young people that dont have a job, money, they have to live with their parents, there are problems in the couple, is so real, and the music goes so fine.