Tierra

A man with psychical problems comes to a little town to solve farmer's grape and wine troubles. He falls in love at a time with a married woman and a young girl, and he gets in troubles with Angela's husband. Julio Medem show us how complicated can be our lives, even if you are in a little and quite place, and how a choice can change your whole life.

Julio Medem's 'Tierra' has that same feel of surrealism, poetry and magic that his other works, namely 'Vacas', 'Los Amantes del Circulo Polar', 'La Ardilla Roja'. His films are a genre of their own. Medem has penned a solid screenplay and done a fine job of showing it on screen. He often works on a broad campus.

The visuals are very simple yet the way Medem and his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe capture them makes them look extraordinary. The film is set in a remote Spanish countryside surrounded by simple earthy brown landscape. Yet the moving images beautifully capture the richness of texture, mood, emotion, sound, symbolism and dialogue. Alberto Iglesias's score is equally spellbinding. Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Karra Elejalde, Silke and Nancho Novo are in top form. Gómez does one of his best works here.

I'll refrain from mentioning anything about the story because, like most of Medem's films, this one is more worthy experiencing rather than just hearing.

The film tells the story of a technician who comes to a little village to solve the problem of the local wines, they taste to soil, in that task he will find several charachters that will start to enter wildly in his life. To me this one is the most discret film in the career of Julio Medem, a genial creator. Even if the film follows the general guidelines of the rest of the filmography of Medem (symbolism and psychologicalism), it lacks of the potence to attract so much the audience.

I liked this film a great deal. Medem is a wonderful director, who can take you for more of a ride with plot alone than most other directors can do with special effects: keep your brain in high gear to follow this story.

Among other twists, we are left to wonder just how much is Angel's hallucination and how much is really occurring. The only fault I can find with the film is that this is not left even more open: I'd rather not know that there is any particular reason to doubt Angel's sanity.

I loved the notion of an exterminator (named Angel, no less) sent to kill off an epidemic of burrowing insects that change the flavor of the local wine, even though he rather likes the altered taste, as do at least some of the locals. I also felt that the theme of a man being drawn carnally to one woman and equally strongly (but less physically) to another, while it has been explored often -- too often -- has seldom been explored better or in a manner more appropriate to the cinema.

Settle back with a glass of Rioja and watch it. Maybe twice.

After seeing "Sex and Lucia" by writer-director Julio Medem, I decided to rent this film and was gratified with one of the best works of international cinema. From the beginning we are fascinated by the world introduced through the main character, an agricultural technician supposedly recently out of a mental hospital. Along the way we get to doubt most everything. We experience a different world that opens up with unexpected violence and repressed longing. The cinematography, production design and performances are extraordinary until the very end, which as with most Julio Medem films happen to be a commercial cop-out of sorts. In the last two minutes, when it all goes in one direction, the writer-director insists in imposing his (overly sentimental) views on his tormented characters and previously constructed world. Rather than let things go towards their ultimate logical consequences and grand finale, it makes for a silly little ending. Still, a must video rent if you want a thought piece with humor and thriller elements.