FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Alfredo is a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman – a dying breed. In fact, his job is actually being removed from the organization, because television based mail-in and newsstand offers are bringing in the majority of revenue. The only way he can stay with the company is to take a job as a filmmaker for a brand new series starting up in Scandinavia. The catch is that he has to film his wife and himself making love. They reluctantly accept and inadvertently find that his wife has become a sex symbol in a foreign land, while he has immersed himself in filmmaking. Alfredo now dreams of making his narrative feature debut thus transitioning himself into a serious artist. Will anyone buy into it?

Considering this was written and directed by virgin filmmaker Pablo Berger, the movie performs quite well. Who said your first time always sucks? But everyone could use some experience, and Berger is no exception. The movie walks a fine line between comedy and drama, and actually makes it all the way across. The only problem is that it sacrifices quality on both sides of the equation in order to accomplish this. There are some funny moments and some cute little moments, but nothing incredibly relatable or wildly entertaining. With the drama, Carmen’s desire to have a baby and all the troubles that occur with that mostly gets lost in the shuffle until it’s convenient for the storyline. And the same can really be said about the acting. It’s never bad, but it rarely gets to an astounding level. The performances just lay dormant in the background, when you know perfectly well they could be better, because you can catch glimpses of higher quality work every once in a while.

The most consistently good aspect of the production is the cinematography by Kiko de la Rica (“Sex and Lucia”). The film has a nice 70s vibe, complete with muted colors and mostly drab surroundings. There are a lot of warmer tones that are pared down to avoid a dank, melancholy atmosphere. The Super-8 material looks great too. It looks amateurish, but not so bad that we can’t see. In fact, a lot of it is shot using a tripod (for obvious reasons) and so virtually only the grain and the obvious angles and composition differentiate it. This is film within a film done well.

Ultimately “Torremolinos 73” doesn’t quite deliver everything it sets out to, as it falls short of delivering a lot of the tragicomic situations. However, there are two moments that brings the movie up a couple notches. One is the first time you see what Alfredo sees through the lens, filming his first movie. The other is the last time you see what Alfredo sees through the lens. The film crescendos with one of those great moments that sticks with you and really make an impact. You finally get a full understanding of these characters and how their minds work – just from these two seemingly simple moments. It’s very powerful, but it comes a little bit too late and instead made me wonder why the rest of the film couldn’t capture that same essence.

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