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.
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.