"Winter´s story, told by herself"

Title: Dolphin Tale

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Family

Director: Charles Martin Smith

Writer: Karen Janszen, Noam Dromi

Runtime: 113min

Cast: Nathan Gamble, Cozi Zuelhsdorff, Harry Connick Jr., Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Austin Stowell, Kris Kristofferson 

Produc.: Alcon Entertainment, Arc Productions

Budget: $37 million approx.

In Dolphin Tale, Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is a child who after meeting a bottle-nose dolphin stranded on a beach, he communicates with a team of rescuers. The team arrives on the scene and transfers it to an aquarium, where the animal must lose its tail to survive. Sawyer will soon feel more and more attuned to the dolphin and will be thereby assisting Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.), along with his daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff), in its care. Within a short time, Sawyer and the now named Winter, will have created a very strong bond.

Dolphin Tale could be defined as one of those cute little movies that are for the enjoyment of the whole family. In this case, while one becomes aware of the circumstances which once surrounded Winter, after the cetacean was rescued in December of 2005 off the coast of Florida.  

The film uses some characters that although never existed in real life, helped to create the drama that we see on the scene. 

The first one we know is Sawyer, a dejected boy and who in an emotional level, has not been able to cope in the best of ways, either with his mother and in terms of his studies. So we are facing a worrying child and which is in need of something that excites him. This "something" will come up just when one morning, a fisherman (Richard Libertini) sees Sawyer from the beach (where they are man and dolphin) and asks him if by any chance hasn´t he got a cell phone to call for help. Sawyer, who does have one, inmmediately goes down to help him and soon releases the dolphin from the crab trap. Not much later, rescuers arrive at the scene and she is taken to there facilities. Then, when the action has moved from a first, secondary location, to the most relevant place of the plot, all ingredients have begun to combine for us to enjoy a story, mostly intended to reach the smaller public.

So Sawyer is curious to know what became of the dolphin, which leads him to venture to a part of the aquarium that is restricted to the public. This is when we meet Rufus, a pelican who lives in the aquarium and that is in charge of putting a certain amount of humor to the narrative.

Then Sawyer meets Hazel, with whom he will share many moments and who will be his best friend (except for Winter, of course) throughout the movie. As expected, Sawyer manages to please Hazel´s father, who allows him to collaborate with Winter. Thus the link between Sawyer and the staff of the aquarium and marine life becomes very narrow, except that Sawyer tries to keep it hidden from his mother, who eventually ends up knowing and giving in.

In Dolphin Tale its director cares not to serve us all the information in a row, showing us some very general aspects of Kyle´s (Austin Stowell) going and coming back from war. Kyle, Sawyer´s cousin and a figure who the kid admires, has to go to fight, in spite of the anguish this causes to Sawyer, to later come back wounded, to occupy a wheelchair.

The rest of the film is developed with a Winter who has had her tail amputee for her own health. It is now that Sawyer uses the collaboration of Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman) -who he knows through his crippled cousin-, an expert in the development of prosthetic limbs. Sawyer presents him his friend´s case, to what the man says he will see what he can do, but making no promises about it. Obviously, Cameron will be able to give much more than he had thought. Us, on the other hand, will discover how it is given the relationship between the kid and the dolphin, while Cameron dedicates himself to getting Winter´s new tail, and up to the moment of the truth, where we learn whether it was or not worth the waiting.

Furthermore, Dolphin Tale covers important issues such as the meaning of friendship or of the personal effort to achieve what we want, and that never hurts to translate into the language of cinema.

My rating: 6/10

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"When love has no barriers"

Titile: Viudas (Widows)

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama

Director: Marcos Carnevale

Writer: Marcos Carnevale, Bernarda Pagés

Runtime: 100min

Cast: Valeria Bertuccelli, Graciela Borges, Rita Cortese, Martín Bossi

Produc.: Aleph Media, Corbelli Producciones, Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), Patagonik Film Group, Tronera Producciones 

In Widows, one morning Elena (Graciela Borges) is directing a documentary when she receives an urgent call from the hospital, where her husband Augusto has being recently admitted. Interrupting the shoot, Elena arrives at the sanitarium at the precise moment when the doors of the operating room are being closed and Augusto has been hospitalized for a stroke. Nonetheless, accompanying the stretcher was a girl, her name Adela (Valeria Vertuccelli), which now she sees walking away and whom Elena does not knows.

Elena, sitting in the waiting room waits with Esther (Rita Cortese), her friend and assistant, when she sees through the window that in the courtyard is the girl she had seen before, and occurs to her that she must be the one who found and brought him to the emergency. To remove this doubts Esther decides to go talk to her, while Elena sees them from the other side and unable to hear a word of it. We hear a part of the conversation, where a young woman too concerned as to be a stranger, informs Esther that she does not intents to go until Augusto recovers. We see the rest of the conversation from Elena´s point of view and only based on physical mannerisms. When minutes later Esther goes back inside, watching her words she would tell her friend that she was right and that the girl was the one who found him and brought him in.

So far the situation seems to have nothing unusual, except that in another scene a nurse asks Elena to remove her daughter from her father's bed, something that Elena does not understands. Then, when she enters the room and sees this stranger lying next to her husband, she sends her out immediately, enraged.

Back with her husband and now angry, Elena asks a man unable to answer, in his state of unconsciousness, if he was cheating on her, but it is understood that what Elena wants is to unload.

Later, in the day of the funeral Elena and Esther are leaving after the last goodbye when they see Adela approaching, now with a bouquet of flowers she delivers to Elena, who short-tempered, in turn gives them away to Esther.

After the last meeting, and when it has become clear that Adela had been Augusto´s lover, Elena prepares to start living without the man who she loved, without having any idea of ​​the problems that are to be coming, because this girl does not intend to leave her alone. Then, on the day of her birthday Elena receives an unexpected and unwanted visitor. Adela with a bouquet of flowers waits for the door to be opened to her, but Elena asks her through Justina, the maid, to leave. At nightfall Adela comes back to insist, this time calling her on the phone and wishing her happy birthday, testing the tolerance of a widow who wants to be left alone. So the director continues to anticipate as what is coming, while making us wonder what could be this girl´s problem. Is she perhaps crazy? Or is she some kind of psychotic?

Finally, Elena gets a phone call to which she says that yes, she is the one their looking for, but no, she has no daughter. However, now things have become larger and she is being urgently needed. Elena arrives at the apartment that Adela had shared with her husband, to meet with the lucky survivor of a suicide attempt lying on a bed in full cry. Within the environment of that apartment Elena has become unwittingly the mother of this girl, after that for some strange reason she had been contacted after the attempted self-elimination. One at this point could try to get into the thoughts of this poor widow and wonder what could be this girl´s intention. To make matters worse, Adela continues to express how sorry she is to bother her, always in tears, as if  it were a consolation to a tired Elena. But the thing does not ends there, as from here on Elena will take Adela temporarily under her roof until she recovers. Because apparently, the options boil down to that or that the girl stays in her own apartment, with the rent not yet paid, and that she ends up being throwing out.

Thus, using some very specific situations is that director Carnevale has been able to show us how, by a twist of fate, these two women of different realities but who share a common bond, end up being roommates, one who aspired that, and the other, unwittingly.

Once Elena and Adela are together is when we finally found out what the real conflict in this film is, which is not that of a widow who must get used to living alone, or of a girl with obsessive behavior. Here the conflict is of a widow (older person who lives with the normal realities of old age) who must learn to cope with her grief, carrying with the sorrow of a girl who has had the audacity to fall in love with "her" husband. Because at the same time, Augusto being a married man had the nerve, not only to cheat on her, but after dying, of leaving her to the care of her lover, who is almost a child and could have been his daughter.

Something here to point out concerns to the relationship that develops between the two women living in Elena´s place. While it is true that in the movie we often see them distant from each other and in silence, every time we see them together and talking, it ends up being Adela who tells Elena how good he and she hanged out together, how they laughted, or how Augusto insisted that he could never imagine a life without Elena at his side. This in turn would be like a bucket of cold water to Elena, for whom it was probably unreal to think that her husband had shared so many intimate moments with this girl.

If we wanted to be more precise we could even define a second issue of ​​interest in this movie, and that relates to the idea that love goes beyond the distance among ages. Probably anyone could find it easy to conceive that a man of about seventy years of age to be attracted to a young girl, but not equally normal to see that a girl in her thirties may feel sexually or emotionally attracted to an older man.

In Widows it is done quite well, showing us the collision of problematics that occurs between these two women, and where one is forced to give in if both want to get on.

Also noteworthy is the performance of Valeria Bertuccelli as an Adela that feels lost, since Augusto´s death appears to have taken with him also part of her soul.

My rating: 7/10

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"The Lord of the ring: but, without the rings"

Title: Mi Primera Boda (My First Wedding)
Year: 2011
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Director: Ariel Winograd
Writer: Patricio Vega
Runtime: 102min
Cast: Natalia Oreiro, Daniel Hendler, Martín Piroyanski, Muriel Santa Ana, Clemente Cancela
Produc.: Film Suez, Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), Luz Libre Producciones, Televisión Federal (Telefé), Tresplanos Cine, surDream Productions

In My First Wedding, Adrián (Daniel Hendler) must do everything that has at his disposal to delay the ceremony of his marriage to Leonora (Natalia Oreiro), after his nervousness made him lose both rings.

Adrián is Jewish and Leonora, Catholic. Initially they should have chosen from one of the two religions to perform the ritual on the day of their marriage. However, thanks to some friends that are beside the point both managed to find both a Jewish priest and a Christian one that had no problems in sharing as hosts of the ceremony. Starting from this unusual situation and other situations with similar characteristics will be how this comedy works and knowing to stay away from decadent jokes.

As if their differences in religion were small matter, throw into this that he is very mild and a gentle guy and she instead a woman of strong temper. This difference of character is the reason or everything that happens in the film, when Adrián is terrified when his clumsiness makes him lose both wedding rings, although one gets to see as evident that among them there is a true love. Then Adrián must do everything possible to prevent the emcees to arrive on time for the celebration, mainly because he understands that if his girlfriend finds out about his accident, she strangles him.

What to do to gain time? wonders the groom. Adrián rides a horse, gallops up a sign indicating the way to the residence and rotates it to confuse the remise chauffeur.

Back at the residence´s garden, Adrián now tells his cousin Fede (Martin Piroyanski), a dim-witted young man, of the mess he just got into, and both are launched in the search of Leonora´s precious wedding ring.

In this film one also has the chance to have fun not with one but with several of the guests. This is the case of uncle Lárazo (José "Pepe" Soriano), who never stops asking marijuana to Adrián, or the case of Inés (Muriel Santa Ana), a young lesbian who soon has a crush on another girl. And there is also the case of Esteban (Clemente Cancela), who, though considerably older than Leonora, had an affair with her years ago when he was a profesor and she was his student, and who has had the guts to accept her invitation, showing up and behaving like a cynic.

Finally, lost on the way to the residence we have Father Patricio and Rabbi Mendl, both divinely interpreted neither more nor less than by Marcos Mundstock and Daniel Rabinovich, best known for their excellent participation in the comedy group Les Luthiers. The perfomance of these two men, who already possess an intrinsic quality to make us laugh, arises the question if perhaps haven´t they written their own dialogues. Taking each of their religions as a starting point they pass the time exchanging different observations with which they joke about very finely.

So, My First Wedding works a triple parallelism (the groom, the bride and the priests) and jumps from one to another, to see how Adrián increasingly entangles; how Leonora begins to wonder if she still wants to get marry, and how the two religious men live together without major complaints with the delay in their arrival.

Turning briefly to the failed aspects, it is true that while the issue of the lost ring is good material to exploit, yet it comes a moment when the joke wears out. By the time Adrián and Fede have been long looking for it, and on top of that now they lose the other one, the dilemma of the ring has already expanded too much, making it clear that creativity stagnated there. We must be content with was we see, and therefore this comedy won´t stop being one of the pile.

My rating: 6/10

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"Is a bird, is a plane. No... Is Arthur Christmas"

Title: Arthur Christmas
Year: 2011
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Drama
Director: Sarah Smith, Barry Cook
Writer: Peter Baynham, Sarah Smith
Runtime: 97min
Cast: James McAvoy,  Jim Broadbent, Billy Nighy, Hugh Laurie
Produc.: Aardman Animations, Sony Pictures Animation
Budget: $100 million approx.

In Arthur Christmas, Santa (Jim Broadbent) and his team of elfs are carrying out the mission of delivering their gifts to the children all over the world, when carelessness leads to an english girl to be about to be the only one who does not receive hers. Realizing this fact, Santa and his son Steve (Hugh Laurie) see it as absolutely impossible, given the lack of time, to do their bit with the child. From that moment it would be up to Arthur (James McAvoy), youngest son of Santa, to make the present reach the girl and prevent her from stop believing in Christmas.

If I am to be honest, I must say that I had no idea of what I would come across. What happens is that if one were to follow all the Christmas movies that are made every year, one would notice that a large majority of these appear to be  the result of the "cut and paste", which leads them to be very boring.

When I heard of its release I immediately arose into two streams of thought, opposite from one another. On one hand I questioned the fact that a producer had decided to launch another Christmasy boredom, probably full of the usual clichés. On the other hand, however, I wonder if maybe in this Arthur Chsirtmas was to be a twist that distinguish it from other films of the same style, and finally I ended up being very pleasant surprised.

In this new cinematic vision of Santa´s activities it does no longer starts from the idea that this chubby and graying-beard guy is an immortal, who for centuries has been devoting to please billions of children worldwide. On the contrary, and as in the rest of us, Santa is part of a family with several generations, and where every so often is emerging a new St. Nicholas.

As we are shown, and given the century we live in, Santa has lately been able to take advantage of the best in high technology to work more quickly, comfortably and safely on board of the magnificent S-1, a sort of spacecraft, easily mistaken for a UFO. At the same time, Santa is accompanied by a team of small, agile elves, who constitute an essential element in each operation.

On the beginning of the film we learn how complex comes to be the working methodology of Santa, whose elves move as if olympic gymnasts, delivering the gifts in the style of Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible. What's more, Santa has an impressive infrastructure worthy of the NASA, from where he is being made a complete and constant, minute by minute tracking of his progress around the planet. In control of this facilities is the unique Steve Christmas, eldest son of Santa, a guy who has seamlessly fulfill his tasks, but who we later learn that lacks of a true notion of what is the meaning of this festivity. Then, on the other side we know Arthur, who receives, responds and manages the millions of letters that come to his father. Arthur, the youngest of the family, we see that is quite clumsy, although he will very soon play a key role in the film, being of the family the one who fits the name better, something of which he will be able to feel proud of.

The problems for Santa will begin when, given a little accident, a gift is moved from its location so that when the gifts are to be delivered, this one (a bike for a girl) goes unnoticed and fails to reach its destination. When the mission is finished and Santa's already gone to sleep, an elf who is taking care of the cleaning runs into it, lost in the dirt, and raises the alarm immediately. At this point, and now with Santa, Steve and Arthur and all the elves aware of the incident, a dispute will arise between whether or not it is possible to deliver this bike, and if for the first time in history will they have to accept that after many missions, the perfect and so meticulously planned roadmap of the Christmas has had a flaw.

The situation here could not have been raised better, where we have on the one hand Santa and Steve, a father and son who want to terminate the mission to go to rest, and who claim that Arthur, who according to them shortly understands the issue, gets that, considering the millions of gifts that are given, a single one that does not reach its destination should not bother him. But to us is much more easier to agree with Arthur, who is the one who really lives the Christmas spirit, and the only one who has had the opportunity to read the letter from Gwen, where the girl was telling Santa that she believed in him. Arthur knows that no child deserves to be left without a present, and that there could be no worst pain than waking up in the morning to see a little girl discovering that her bike is not under the tree.

A worried Arthur ends up talking with Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) on the issue. Grandsanta, one of the most interesting characters of the film, a funny 137 year old, short and stooped man, who uses a cane and a denture. It ends up being very interesting how this man, which none of his relatives would believe, becomes the voice of wisdom and experience, and who guides his grandson on the way to do things as should be done.

Grandsanta will propose Arthur to go out and deliver that last gift, but not in an advanced ship but in a sleigh pulled by reindeers, and although Arthur is not very convinced at first, he ends up giving in, venturing into what will become from now on practically a road movie, played in large extent by them. Along the road to the town of Trelew in England (home of the girl), Arthur and his grandfather will go through a lot of crazy situations, which include having to face a hungry pack of lions (and which´s resolution will be something completely crazy), evading the police, or missing, one by one, each of the reindeers that pull the sled along different scenarios, which will force them to take measures, first absurd, then could be said as "extreme".

As the flick is nearing its final development will be just when Steve and his father come to understand what Arthur meant when he emphasized the importance of every child receiving his gift and no matter the difficulty thatt that could implied.

The intelligence with which the directors have put into images the pose is so outstanding that one could even ask, "Why did I have to grow up and stop believing in Santa?". Out of the many endings, which as I said before, seem things of the "cut and paste", in this case we have a script that uses fresh material and ideas to focus on the meaning of gifts and to discover the magic that comes with that moment when the kid opens the present and smiles.

My rating: 8/10

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"Animated cinema made at home"

Title: Selkirk, el verdadero Robinson Crusoe (Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe)
Year: 2011
Genre: Animation, Adventure
Director: Walter Tournier
Writer: Walter Tournier
Runtime: 80min
Produc.: Maíz Producciones, Patagonik, Cineanimadores, La Suma CineTV, Tournier Animation
Budget: $1,2 million approx.

Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe tells us the story of Alexander Selkirk, who joins Captain Bullock´s crew to embark toward the South Seas in the search of treasures. Finding no enemy threats in the way, the pirates entertain themselves by betting their money and Selkirk himself ends up being the lucky winner of each bet. Thus, no sooner they sight land and descend to stock up, Selkirk is abandoned as a revenge in the solitude of the island while the others take up with the journey.

After many decades filling the movie theaters of our country, either against films such as Peter Pan (1953), The Lion King (1994), Ratatouille (2007) or Puss in Boots (2011), now hits uruguayan theaters what is coming to be our debut in the category of animated feature film, and it could not have started in a worst way.

Walter Tournier, already known for his work on Los Tatitos, has been commissioned to write and direct this project, which I was able to inform myself about, would envolve an investment of something over $1 million dollars. As a curiosity, it is worth mentioning that Selkirk was not to be developed by the more traditional techniques, the hand drawing or the latest digital animation. In the case of this film it would be subject to the called stop motion animation or animation “frame by frame”, where puppets of 20 to 30 centimeters in height, of metallic internal structure and covered in silicon would be handled by different animators, a total of 10 and divided into two shifts, to obtain (based on the rule of 24 frames per second) an average of between 15 and 20 seconds of film per day.

With Selkirk, Tournier brings to the big screen a story inspired by Alexander Selkirk, real character whose circumstances later inspired the english Daniel Defoe to write his acclaimed novel Robinson Crusoe.

To analyze this film is important to be divided into two parts: on the one hand to what concerns to the animation, and the other, to its script. Regarding the first one, I can only say that the performance of all the team bore good fruit, as this production has nothing to envy to the U.S. animations of the same style, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Jim and the Giant Peach (1996) and Corpse Bride (2005). As for the second point, it is due to a very bad scripted, that we must agree as to that the uruguayan animated cinema "has started on the wrong foot."

It turns out that Tournier's script is so very bad, as to probably leading many to want to leave the movie theater after 20 minutes. As we all know, today´s animated films are mainly characterized by its sense of humor that appeals to both children and adults, and the sad truth is that there are count with the fingers the jokes that we can see here. To make matters worse, the dialogue is so flat and lacking of spark that bores at all time, besides being one hundred percent explanatory.

Another quite significant flaw is in the handling of the scenarios, since is much more the time that is devoted to the adventures of Selkirk on the galleon, than what is given later, to the island. This is precisely where it should have been the strengh of the story, as it is the problem of this shipwrecked man that interested us all, and not his social life with the other pirates.

The narrative poverty is also recognizable in terms of the score, in which there is little to actually call "soundtrack", as there are only a couple of little songs with some rhymes, but lacking any possible appeal.

Further more, there was also an element which, by the end of the movie caught my attention. I mention this because it is not a detail that will reveal anything too important on the plot. This happens when, in the end Selkirk is rescued, boards a boat and says something like: "From now on I will not be anymore Selkirk, and I shall be called Robinson Crusoe." It's amazing and unfortunate that the director had made use of a phrase so graceless and fetched, to explain how his character changed his name, as well as completely unnecessary, as the story he invited us to see is the one about Selkirk, not Robinson Crusoe. In short, Selkirk is just a silly little tale without emotion or surprises.

My rating: 2/10

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"Revenge can change people"

Title: La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Writer: Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar (collaborator), Thierry Jonquet (novel "Tarantula")

Runtime: 117min

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes

Produc.: Canal+ España, El Deseo S.A., Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), Televisión Española (TVE)

Budget.: $13 million approx.

In The Skin I Live In Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, an excellent surgeon, who after the rape of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez) decides to kidnap Vicente (Jan Cornet), boy responsible for the act, to get revenge. 

Prior to this film the truth is that I had it hard getting into the so particular universe of Pedro Almodóvar. Given some comments that had come to me from people who were not liking this artist´s movies, there was a time when I finally ended up rejecting it, for creating myself a baseless prejudice to a director whose work I had not even bothered to see as to judge. 

In the end I ended up seeing three of his latest features in a very short period of time. I saw All About My Mother (1999), Bad Education (2004) and Talk to Her (2002). The first showed me a transvestite father and a nun with AIDS, in the second I was told the story of the homosexual love between a priest and a child, and in the third one I was told of a male nurse who after raping a comatose woman left her pregnant. So this spanish director had an affinity for movies with erotic content and somewhat twisted, and a certain attraction to the rather macabre arguments, which could make you feel rejection. On my part I did find this films to be somewhat outlandish but not less interesting, since Almodóvar had shown me to have the ability and sufficient talent to make his stories compelling. 

Later, when I learned of his last and most recent foray into the cinema, then I decided to check out of curiosity what average raiting would have people given to it on the IMDB site. The truth is that, today February 7, 2012, The Skin I Live In has a 7.7/10. Not bad, really. 

Finally I watched this film, lacking any notion of its subject. The picture then began quite rare, with Robert Ledgard watching a beautiful girl, her name Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), through a giant TV screen, while she occupied a large room from which at no time was she seen getting out. Meanwhile, Robert and Marilia (Marisa Paredes), his employee, were presented as the warders in charge of the girl within her isolation to be comfortable, of that nothing to be missing for her, but also of her not to have chances of escaping. And here everything was a mystery. Almodóvar would never hurry when it come to gradually revealing the details of the story, each in its time and in the order in which he knew, would be the most accurate. 

The plot of the movie then began to unfold from a shot with a comical approach, in which a bald young man, Zeca (Robert Álamo), and dressed in a tiger costume crossed the street to look for Marilia, his mother, with whom he had long time been without seeing. Once inside the house would see Vera thanks to a TV in the kitchen, then would immobilize his mother, gagged and bound her into a chair, and quickly proceed to find Vera. Is in this way that, thanks to Robert Álamo is that Almodóvar would shows us much of the erotic content of the film, which would not make as wait too long. 

However, it would not be until Robert agreed Vera to leave her confinement that Marilia would give herself the time to put up the girl with the dramatic events concerning the past lived by Robert, first with the death of his wife and then with the tragedy of his daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez). From here the film would turn into a constant of flashbacks and returning into the present, getting as to know in detail the circumstances that had led to the rape of the girl, her subsequent staying in a clinic and the wrath of a vengeful father, suddenly changed into a masked hijacker capable of anything. Almodóvar manages to put into images in an impeccable way what must be the pain of a father who has been violated, hurting him where it could hurt him more, a suffering even bigger than if he had had some bones broken, for Ledgard to bring out the worst in him as a man. 

Without getting to much into matters that would be better for one to know, not by some criticism, but through the film itself, I can say that Robert will leave it clear to what extent he has been developed as a surgeon and how remarkable is his knowledge of the human body. 

In The Skin I Live In we get to know the very disturbing link that unites Robert with Vicente, and then, to Robert himself, but with Vera, whom he retains in a sort of Big Brother. 

My raiting: 9/10

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"Meeting the masters of the night"

Title: Vampires

Year: 2010

Genre: Comedy

Director: Vincent Lannoo

Writer: Vincent Lannoo, Frédérique Broos

Runtime: 88min

Cast: Carlo Ferrante, Vera Van Dooren, Pierre Lognay, Fleur Lise Heuet, Julien Doré, Batiste Sornin

Produc.: Left Film Ventures

In the way of a false mockumentary Vampires takes us to Belgium, where a film crew accompanies a family of vampires in their daily lives. Here we have Georges (Carlo Ferrante), the father; Bertha (Vera Van Dooren) the mother; Samson (Pierre Lognay), the son; and Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet), the daughter. 

From the hand of director Vincent Lannoo comes to us this product that takes the daily life of the bloodsuckers for the comedy and black humor. As in many other cases, here it starts from the idea that we are supposedly watching a real documentary, which is, obviously, not true. It is also very clearly stated that it is a real privilege for us to have access to this material, since three where the times the crew tried to get into vampire territory, failing in the first two: they were attacked. 

Within the fiction of this documentary, it is understood that the film crew finally reached an agreement so that, once inside with the enemy, the predator would attempt, at least for this time, not to attack them. 

The idea of ​​a fake documentary, nowadays already very seen, is combined with the vampire genre, which in turn, at least I have no memories of it having been approached like this before. So we have something different, and facing a community of undead with very interesting customs, who like Dracula himself, they sleep in coffins, fear the sunlight and crucifixes and can not mourn, love or reproduce. They also have conflicts between neighbors, as well as laws of coexistence. 

Yet, I would say that the most striking aspect is the ease with which they behave, since they face their problems and concerns (for us, very rare; whereas for them, pretty standard) in a way that it does not seem that the documentary were false, because every situation we see happens with total authenticity. There is a very good example, when Samson being in class (and considering his appearance, a first glance the boy must be enrolled in high school) has to learn to bite the humans jugular, practicing with a doll on a table. No matter how hard he tries, Samson fails to satisfy his teacher, who angrily reproaches his inability to follow directions. Samson's incompetence plus his teacher´s anger could perfectly remember our primary school days, with those teachers who were unbearable and that made us a hard time. 

Despite such originality, Vampires falls into a structural problem. From the moment the documentary crew arrives at the unknown environment, the film results into us attending their various social spaces, but without bothering to establish for us a specific argument. So, on one hand we keep track of their lives, while on the other hand, we can never know where it is intended to lead us, as it lacks a firm basis, a specific conflict from which to develop everything that follows. Precisely, at some point one would have probably become tired of knowing these people and want some new problematic to be solved. What happens is that we tend to look in every movie for a beginning, a development and an end, that here are not very well specified. As a mockumentary, this product has good intentions, but ends up staying on that and being also too slow. 

My rating: 3/10

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