Al sur de Granada

This time I've seen a bad film, the history is not interesting, it is really boring. In addition, actors don't do any good play, they all seem too much uncomfortable with their papers and the directing is not good. Despite that, the description of a southern Spanish town of the 30's is not bad, and it saves the film to receive a worse mark. Theorically the story is about a English man that wants to be a writer and goes to Granada to have inspiration, there, he crashes with the strange town behavior which he is not used to. Of course, he finally falls in love and all these things. Unfortunately this is not a Meg Ryan's film so the story is not well told to us, nor the crash of cultures (and nothing). Personally, I've seen much better films, so, unless you like the director I should recommend not to see this film (if you like the director, you can, but I think that this is his worst work).

I have to say that finally I see a Fernando Colomo's movie that I like. "Al sur de Granada" is beautifully filmed, has a nice pace and contains superb acting. The recreation of beginning of the century Alpujarras is convincing, the characters credible and the plot engaging.

Having myself lived in an Andalusian pueblo for the better part of a year (albeit in 2004) I found myself amused by some of the similarities between my own "modern" experiences and those of Geraldo in this light-hearted romantic comedy -- particularly the dumb-struck way in which he initially blunders about in a world that is in many ways completely alien to him. Also quite familiar was the tightness of the community, the openness, the love of the art of conversation, the desire (as embodied in the character of Paco) to find any reason to throw a party, and of course, the wonderful, passionate Flamenco.

The village characters, less than fully fleshed-out individuals but more than stereotypes, are in some ways archetypes of the times. Much of Andalusia was impoverished in that time period (another familiarity to me, having grown up in a small, poor rural town in the US) -- and yes, as in all such places, there are the machinations for dominance in the village, the matrimonial plotting of the town matriarchs, and even the mystique embodied, however clumsily, by the gangly English foreigner Geraldo, who has arrived looking only inspiration, but finds himself rather lost and quickly swept away by the engines of fate.

Far from being a "serious" film, this comedy depicts well the clash of Geraldo's naive artistic intentions with what life in this poor Andalusian town, to which he is so completely new, actually provides him. The film serves as a metaphor of more modern times in Andalusia as well, with so many Britons and other northerners having relocated to the Spanish Mediterranean -- bringing with them the two-edged sword of wealth and development, which has lifted much of Andalusia out of poverty in recent decades, but subverted a good deal of passionate tradition as well. Little pueblos evolve into bedroom communities for British, Dutch and German retirees and wealthy vacationers, and new golf resorts spring up like weeds. The transformation of Andalusiua, depicted in a simplistic way in the film, continues.

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.

This movie is the cinematographic transposition of a beautiful autobiographic work: British writer (and historian) Gerald Brenan wrote a very sincere piece about his six years in the Alpujarras and everything shown in the picture is true, including people's names or the birth of his Spanish daughter Miranda Helen.

The film, which is very nice, focuses on Brenan's story and doesn't show a great deal of the Alpujarras, which is a pity.

Educated readers however could draw an interesting comparison between the present title and 'Tortilla Flat' or its sequels. Both Steinbeck's and Brenan's works (which are contemporary) describe Anglo/American people living in a Spanish/Mexican environment but besides what these stories have in common, Steinbeck's ones are fictional while Brenan's is real.

And someone could actually dislike how the Englishman behave: I personally think he was too young. Being older and more experienced, maybe he would have made other choices.