Al sur de Granada

This is a beautiful looking movie, wonderfully photographed. It isn't a great film by any means, but it is charming and entertaining, presenting a topical view of life in the southern villages of Spain at the time. The characters are not fully fleshed people, they are stereotypes attempting to represent the different hues of the Spanish psyche... if you look hard enough, you can even find references to the Quixote/Sancho relationship which is so characteristic of the Spanish culture. There are some disappointments too: social issues such as the great divide between rich and poor, the consequences of the religious protestant reform failure in Spain, and the emigration dream (in this case to Argentine) are just touched but never fully explored. Fernando Colomo is an A-list director of the Spanish film industry and he has attracted a star studded cast to this movie. Great names like Antonio Resines and Angela Molina are happy to take on what they are really minor roles... The acting in general is quite good. Ultimatelly this ends up being a 'fish out of water' film which appears to have had pretensions of becoming a quality/art cinema when first conceived, but never quite achieved it.