El comensal

Drama about sad events in Basque Country in which happened terrorism , threats , grisly killings and nowadays a family going on the deep injuries . Iciar (Susana Aibatua) and Fernando (Fernando Oyagüez) are young teens . The two go through the most traumatic experience of their brief lives : the loss of one of the parents. But Fernando and Iciar cannot share the pain or the strategies to manage it. They live in different times. Fernando in 1977 in Bilbao faces the kidnapping of his father (Iñaqui Miramon) by ETA. Iciar in 2011 in Navarra takes on the sudden cancer of his mother (Adriana Ozores) . From this unexpected loss, Iciar becomes aware of the tragic kidnapping and murder of her grandfather, whom she never knew, at the hands of the terrorist organization ETA , who in 1977 he was captured on his home by a commando of the terrorist band ETA, under threat to kill him unless the family paid 1,000,000,000 of pesetas . Her father (Ginés García Millán) attempts to talk about the matter but things go wrong. She has been doing it since the second decade of the 21st century, asking her father about what happened to her grandfather and from the dark past she is reeling off keys to interpret the story . So Iciar embarks on her account in a reconstruction of the tense days of the kidnapping forty years ago. Thanks to her efforts to bring to light the family memory, her father and she will meet again in a new way of looking at the past to live the future...

Adaptation of Gabriela Ybarra's autobiographical novel of the same name about a granddaughter wants to know about her family's painful past, and whose suffering has been latent since 1977 when ETA kidnapped her grandfather , so the kidnap of Javier Arriaga in the movie is based on the real-life kidnap of her ascendant Javier de Ybarra y Bergé -a businessman and former mayor of Bilbao- . Interesting to see how the generation of grandchildren allows themselves to inquire about the tragedies that befell their families in which silence and pain gripped the second generation of descendants . González-Sinde returns to the cinema after a long hiatus and she goes back , in my opinion, with an acceptable and interesting film. And it is not because the director has surpassed a remarkable work with this film, it is simply because Sinde's movie is correct and well adapted. The drama is approached from the intimate sentiment , from the family nucleus and in relation to the own members. The girl's memories return to her adult memory when she had been rrally affected similarly her father and the processes of each one will take different routes and times. There are several flashbacks in the Basque Country or Pais Vasco , in the 70s when the terrorist organization ETA brutally killed about one thousand people and acting similarly to Sicilian Mafia .Something as tragic as a kidnapping, a deadly disease happening around loved ones and seen from the prism of the granddaughter and daughter of the victims should have more power, reach the viewer in a closer, even devastating way. The film delves into the painful secrets of the heart that emerge in moments of life when it seems that they were anesthetized by slabs of coldness. The story is pretty well ; however , being slow-moving and some dull, because the story needs a vibration more real than the one offered in this sometimes tiring flick , though also contains interesting scenes , thrilling images and sensitive moments.

Although the film is paced in a contained way and with the skill that the director knows how to print in terms of rhythm, dialogues and others .The actors are all very good , the great Adriana Ozores stands out above all and the always solvent García Millán .

The picture is nice but slow and dull at times. Anyway, its is compensated with the great performances from main cast , and support cast such as Susana Abaitua, Ginés García Millán , Adriana Ozores , Fernando Oyagüez, Iñaki Miramón, Ane Gabarain, among others . Adding a sensitive score by Antonio Garamendi and charming choice of music, including Rosa León: Qué va a quedar de estos días and her children's songs . As well as evocative and adequate cinematography by Juan Carlos Gómez. The motion picture was directed by Ángeles González-Sinde . She is a prstigious screenwriter who was even Minister of Culture. Sinde has directed a few but decent films , such as : Una palabra tuya (2008 , ¿Y a mí quién me cuida? (2007), Madrid 11M: Todos íbamos en ese tren (2004), La suerte dormida (2003). Rating : 6.5/10 .In any case, a very stimulating memory exercise for being able to put very close events on the table in time that we should never forget.