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Academy Award Submission for Nomination Best Foreign Language Film: Cuba: ‘The Companion’ Interview with Pavel Giroud1988, Cuba, those infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS were given free room, board and medical treatment at a beautiful facility called “Los Cocos”. Except for the criminals who shared prison cells, the patients shared apartments with other patients. These apartments were so comfortable that some healthy people wanted to have AIDS so they could live in such conditions. But the patients were also treated as prisoners, living under military guard. One day a week they were allowed a day of freedom when they could leave the facility, but they had to have a companion assigned to be with them at all times.

“The Companion”/ “El acompañante” is a very Cuban film because the government’s treatment and control over the spread of AIDS was very particular to Cuba. The story is based on...

Viridiana

Written by Julio Alejandro and Luis Buñuel

Directed by Luis Buñuel

Spain/Mexico, 1961

The Cannes Film Festival has long been a venue to court controversy, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel was likewise one who consistently reveled in the divisive. At the 1961 festival, Buñuel brought his latest release, Viridiana, and the results were spectacular, and spectacularly contentious. The film, which shared Palme d’Or honors with Henri Colpi’s The Long Absence, was subsequently met with charges of blasphemy from the Vatican’s newspaper, and it was promptly banned in Buñuel ‘s native Spain.

The Spanish reaction was particularly critical. Viridiana’s production in Buñuel’s place of birth was already a hot topic. Having left for America and Mexico in 1939, Spain’s surrealist native son was back home, the adamantly leftist filmmaker now working amidst Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship. What’s the worst that could happen?

Viridiana is what happened,...

Chicago – At the dark heart of Luis Buñuel’s Oscar-nominated 1970 classic, “Tristana,” is a character so spectacularly hypocritical and richly fascinating that he upstages everyone including the titular heroine. As played by the great Fernando Rey, ignoble nobleman Don Lope is a self-professed libertine bound by traditional values. He passionately believes in the virtues of freedom, but only on his terms.

Lope may insist that his beloved Tristana (Catherine Deneuve, never lovelier nor icier) is free to leave his murky mansion whenever she pleases, but she knows all too well that’s not the case. After taking on the role of the parentless 19-year-old’s guardian, Lope quickly falls for the wide-eyed woman, alternately treating her as his daughter and wife. Rey is both comically ludicrous and deeply pitiful as he attempts to claim the heart of a woman who can’t stand the sight of him.

Blu-ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

Taken out of its historical context,...

Viggo Mortensen chooses his roles carefully and selectively. Before last year's "A Dangerous Method," he hadn't been seen on screen since 2009's "The Road." And indeed, we're not going to see to much of him in 2012. While his performance in Walter Salles' "On The Road" is strong, it's also quite brief, but fans of the actor will be delighted to know, his next effort will have them seeing double.

Mortensen stars in the Argentinian film "Everyone Has A Plan," and the first trailer for the thriller has now arrived and no, you're not hallucinating: he's playing dual roles in the movie. Directed by Ana Piterbarg, from her script that won the Julio Alejandro Screenplay Award at the 2008 Malaga Film Festival, the film tells the story of a man desperate to abandon his unfulfilling existence after years of living in Buenos Aires. Following the death of his identical twin brother Pedro,...

About a year ago, it was revealed that Viggo Mortensen was set to return Argentina, a country where he lived in for several years as a child, to star in the directorial debut of Ana Piterbarg, "Todos tenemos un plan" or "Everyone Has A Plan." Little has been heard from project since then but an update today reveals the production is set to wrap imminently and a handful of stills and set photos providing us the first look at Mortensen in his dual role as twins, Agustin and Pedro. The script, which won the Julio Alejandro Screenplay Award at the…...

Viridiana, Luis Buñuel’s provocative 1961 Palme d’Or-winning classic proving that life is a bitch and then you play cards, will run at New York City’s Film Forum from Friday, April 24, through Thursday, April 30. Inspired by a painting of Saint Viridiana kneeling on the floor before a crucifix and crown of thorns (and by Benito Pérez Galdós‘ novel Halma), co-written by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro, and financed by the lead actress’ rich husband, Viridiana stars Silvia Pinal (recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Ariel Award), as a pious young nun who, before entering a cloister, goes visit her strange and reclusive uncle (Fernando Rey). There, while trying to do Good, she befriends the uncle’s illegitimate son (Francisco Rabal), who enjoys having the company of his pretty cousin. In Viridiana, Buñuel’s humor is, as usual, subtly (sometimes not that subtly) mordant, though the film isn’t exactly the...