The 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF) was an important showcase for Spanish-language cinema: 6 out of the 16 films in competition were spoken in Spanish. But there is no doubt that the Concha de Oro (which is the top prize) awarded to Catalan director Albert Serra’s documentary Tardes de soledad is well deserved, despite the controversy that preceded it.
Animal rights groups had called for its exclusion from the competition fearing that it would celebrate bullfighting, but Serra’s movie is not for or against it. In portraying the Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca, Serra opts for a precise and repetitive style: he always film Roca from the same frontal point of view when traveling by car, he always point the camera on him when he’s inside the arena (waiting or fighting) avoiding long shots. We can admire Roca’s gestures and expressiveness as by a true actor, we see his arrogance and pain; even getting dressed in the hotel is like a ceremony.
This way of filming him perhaps gives in a little to the fascination with his figure, but it’s first and foremost an aesthetic representation without moral implications. Precisely for this reason, those who believe that the bullfighter is the hero will find material to reinforce their conviction, but those who believe that bullfighting is barbaric will see it depicted as such in a mechanical manner and to the point of boredom: a freedom of judgment left to the audience by a direction that provides an artistic experience rather than a cast of reality.
Among the titles that we’re sorry not to have seen awarded, however, is Costa-Gavras’ latest work, Le dernier souffle (Last Breath), based on an essay (non translated in Italy) made as if it were a fictional film, in which the names of the two authors are precisely changed: the writer Fabrice Toussaint (based on Régis Debray and played by Denis Podalydès) and the practitioner Augustin Masset (based on Claude Grange and played by Kad Merad) who discuss the topic of palliative care.
The writer meets the doctor after a follow-up visit and gets interested in his difficult work with the terminally ill both out of curiosity and because he is afraid of the results of his tests. Through the doctor’s memories, and then by following his patients in treatment, we discover how he tries to relate to the patients who no longer have hope of recovery and to their families. The main problem is that many of them demand to be cured, or at least that everything possible is done until the end; sometimes this obstinacy blinds even – or only – the family members. For many it’s hard to accept a dignified accompaniment to a death that is no longer avoidable, as if they still have something holding them back; then there are those who suffer more in mind than in spirit, or those who would simply like to be cared for in the most decent way possible.
Tale after tale – all told with simplicity and sincerity, without worthless emphasis or emotional blackmail – we are offered a true philosophical education on death, so that we can understand how to deal with it with serenity or at least without unnecessary physical and psychological suffering. It’s a rigorous and also useful cinema, that takes advantage from the clear and sympathetic look at illness and end of life of a master of cinema in his nineties.
Another great director in the competition was Mike Leigh (past winner of Cannes and Venice festivals) with Hard Truths, in which he conceived a series of small family stories around Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a “difficult” woman: she has a bad temper, is antisocial, obsessed with hygiene, probably has an undiagnosed depression. She has a bad relationship with her husband and even a worse one with her son, a 22-year-old unemployed and not receiving an education or vocational training.; she can’t get along neither with her sister, a single mother of two daughters.
The description of various family problems in an ordinary contemporary British family, especially those never explicitly acknowledged and thus never dealt with, is very accurate, as if there was a great effort to make this dysfunctional family multifaceted and believable; it’s also a cleaver choice not to explain everything unnaturally, and particularly about the characters’ pasts.
Unfortunately we couldn’t notice equally care in the directorial style: the cinematography is based on flat lighting and the images have no cinematic beauty; the too many close-ups, instead of helping to give drama to the characters, seem like a TV movie gimmick to avoid showing locations and externals views. This film has a good script, especially in terms of character creation, but if we talk about its aesthetics, it doesn’t look so good to watch.
