Tirante el Blanco (The Maidens’ Conspiracy), 2006

Based on the popular, baroque, fifteenth century chevalier story Tirante el Blanco, the seminal Catalan novel that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra cites as a profound influence on the realization of Don Quixote de La Mancha, Vicente Aranda’s The Maidens’ Conspiracy is a lavish, risqué, and skillfully composed, but superficial and unsatisfying medieval adventure that combines […]

Los Años Desnudos (The Naked Years: Rated-R), 2008

The liberalization of Spain in the aftermath of Franco’s death provides the chaotic framework for Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso caustic seriocomedy Rated-R, a deconstruction of the cine del destape (literally, “uncovered films”) wave of risqué, low budget comedies that sought to push the envelope of social mores and dismantle taboos reinforced during Franco’s repressive […]

Contestant, 2007

Rodrigo Cortes’s first feature, Contestant is something like effervescent, visual prestidigitation, a self-consciously frenetic, hyperactive, insubstantial, flauntingly inconstant, and naïve satire on the perils of modern-day instant wealth, consumerism, applied economics, and state taxation. The film follows the plight of an attractive economics history professor, Martin Circo (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who wins the largest cache of […]