José Luis Garci's third feature film, in which he began his collaboration with Alfredo Landa, who would star again in many other films by the filmmaker . Paced with humor and tenderness, it is a film about life itself, about our suffering daily work and the well-earned weekend break, resulting to be an anti-consumerist fable . After graduating in Economic Sciences, José Rebolledo (Alfredo Landa) has gone from being a bellboy to having an important position in the insurance company La Confianza S. A. He has married Conchi (Maria Casanova) , has two children and has bought a villa in an urbanization next to Cereceda, a town in the Sierra Madrileña and every weekend he takes the car with his wife and two children to go to the countryside. Hoping to find peace with his family , he spends a countryside weekend . However , everything goes wrong over the weekend. But there are all problems and difficulties with his family and especially with his neighbors who turn out to be colleagues and superiors in his ordinary work. There she has to put up with her annoying mother-in-law (Irene Gutierrez Caba), her sister-in-law Matilde (Cecilia Roth) who is pregnant by her stupid boyfriend Alberto (Pedro Diaz del Corral), and go to the party of her chiefs Enrique (Angel Picazo, Carlos Larrañaga). And subsequently to go play football with the residents of the urbanization.
An interesting film providing a sour and thorny critical about the failure of the welfare society that reflects very well on the Upper-middle-class Spanish people from the first years of post-Francoism. This is a thought-provoking drama , being well paced and compellingly filmed . It's an intelligent and touching story, although sometimes slow moving and overtalking ; however , being finely developed with sense of style and high sensibility. This is the third film by José Luis Garci, and the first collaboration with Alfredo Landa and Maria Casanova. The film is acceptable and passable , being competently made by José Luis Garci , but It turns out to be one of his most incomprehensible works for having a confusing and underlined anti-consumerist message ; in addition , a surprising and inexplicable ending. Alfredo Landa is very good , as always , playing an honest clerk, quiet and low profile that dreams during the week to rest in a villa which is in the suburbs.
This brooding motion picture was professionally directed by Jose Luis Garci who won one Academy Award for ¨Volver a Empezar¨. José Luis Garci had made a name for himself in Spanish cinephilia thanks to two films, ¨Asignatura pendiente¨ and ¨Solos en la madrugada¨, both endowed with a certain seriousness in their approach, very appropriate for the time of the sociopolitical transition of the second part of the seventies . Now that so much time has passed, it is neceesary to mention the collaboration between Antonio Mercero and Garci, co-authored the excellent television short : La Cabina. José Luis Garci is without a doubt one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film in Spain and perhaps the best known writer in the country. He has left a distinguished talent in his successful movies throughout the years: La Cabina (1972), Las Verdes Praderas (1979), El Crack (1981), El Crack II , Volver a Empezar (1982), Canción De Cuna (1994), La Herida Luminosa (1997), El Abuelo (1998), Tiovivo c. 1950 (2004) , Ninette (2005) , Luz del Domingo (2007) , among others. Rating : Acceptable and well worth seeing . Rating : 6/10 . A decent film, that's why it is essential and indispensable watching , but appointed to José Luis Garci fans .
