The Girl of Your Dreams

Reviewing the comments, you can spot a trend: people from Spanish speaking countries like the movie while the rest, don't. The reason is that its not possible to translate the movie without loosing a lot in the process: the dialogues and expressions are what really makes the film funny. Personally, I think the movie is fantastic.

With a wonderful cast, including the divine Penélope Cruz, this movie is the best Spanish movie of 1998. As a humorous approach to Spanish actors working in Hitler´s Germany, it provides the spectator with large quantities of laughs, as well as with very touching scenes.

The cast is excellent and the movie is quite funny and moving. Not to mention based on historical facts. (Spanish actors doing movies at the UFA studios in the thirties). The setting, the costumes and photo -brilliant. However there's one big draw back: The plot goes "Thummpph!" after an hour and suddenly becomes a French farse (people banging doors, hiding in closets and becoming hysterical) and it all falls apart. It does pick up at the end though. It's not the greatest film ever made but it's watchable. And Penelope Cruz...what can I say? She's fabulous.

One may wonder if "La niña de tus ojos" really deserves all the nominations and awards it got. It is not "Belle époque" and there are some obvious clichés but it's still a very enjoyable film. The colours are vibrant and the black humour is piquant though not everyone (especially the English-speaking audience, and Asian audiences not exposed to this sort of humour) may appreciate it. Of course, the fabulous Penelope Cruz will make one overlook whatever faults there are in the film. As usual, she's brilliant. The interplay of dialogue in Spanish, German and Russian is hilarious. Liked it very much.

A rather unusual Spanish film, to say the least: an Andalucían theatre group go to Nazi Germany to make a film and get swallowed up in all the nasty things going on there, which in itself is rather cute, given all the nasty things that had been going on back in Spain.

The mixture of drama with a quizzical farcical touch of Spanish black humour thrown in does not quite work with me, I'm afraid. Fernando Trueba, as ever, has done his job well. The scene-setting is truly exceptional; the dialogues at times are really good but at others tend to jar on the ear making me wonder if this is the same Rafael Azcona (Logroño, 1926) as in other far better scripts; and hearing Penélope Cruz with an Andalucían accent is definitely something not to be missed at any price…….!! Oh, she's from Madrid, by the way, and that city has its own dialect. I've never had much sympathy for Antonio Resines, despite having to acknowledge that in this film he is pretty good and I should say the same of Loles León who I have seen a few times in very trivial TV paraphernalia. Rosa María Sardá is of course splendid, her live-theatre upbringing lending a good hand to the occasion.

So the ingredients are more or less right, but the whole just does not convince me; perhaps the story-line, perhaps the rather strange sense of humour in bizarre situations...

Well, never mind: Penelope Cruz is `La Niña de Mis Ojos' (The Girl of My Eyes) whenever and wherever she pops up, which, thank goodness, is nice and frequent.

The Spanish spoken is rather difficult and so is for people at an advanced level; otherwise the film should be seen dubbed or with subtitles.