Benito Zambrano's Solas offers us a collection of stereotypes which are of little credibility and make of this film a hard and boring view. It is basically the account of a few weeks in the lives of some personages, in the particular circumstance that the father of a family is in hospital and his wife has to move to the city to stay with him.
No hint of sensitivity, or even humanity, is to be found in the ogre- like personage of the father, of whom we know through patches of conversation that is alcoholic (a vice inherited by his daughter), violent, family abuser and wasteful. To this father's attitude, the wife and the daughter adopt completely opposite attitudes; totally submissive the wife, whom might well have been depicted with an aura of holiness around her head; rebel and contemptuous towards her father the daughter, who hates him undisguisedly.
Social groups are portrayed under fixed stereotypes too: all affluent people are egoist, thoughtless towards others and bad; all poor people have a good heart, but life circumstances may make them behave not so honestly; all men are thoughtless, brute, women chasers, football lovers and sex-obsessed, but for one of the characters of the film, a neighbor which seems to share with the wife the gift of holiness; and all women are... well, they are a bit more fleshed out in the film and considered as individuals, rather than as a bulk indistinguishable from one another.
I cannot recommend watching this film to anybody, but maybe for those whom may feel reassured in their convictions about human stereotypes in case they are coincident with those depicted in the film. Only one scene seemed to me of cinematographic value: when the daughter is watching through a passing train a bag lady carrying her trolley; as the different carriages pass by we can see in very short flashes the increasing expression of sorrow, desperation and realization of the bag lady desperate condition. Ana Fernández is fine in her role as the daughter.
No hint of sensitivity, or even humanity, is to be found in the ogre- like personage of the father, of whom we know through patches of conversation that is alcoholic (a vice inherited by his daughter), violent, family abuser and wasteful. To this father's attitude, the wife and the daughter adopt completely opposite attitudes; totally submissive the wife, whom might well have been depicted with an aura of holiness around her head; rebel and contemptuous towards her father the daughter, who hates him undisguisedly.
Social groups are portrayed under fixed stereotypes too: all affluent people are egoist, thoughtless towards others and bad; all poor people have a good heart, but life circumstances may make them behave not so honestly; all men are thoughtless, brute, women chasers, football lovers and sex-obsessed, but for one of the characters of the film, a neighbor which seems to share with the wife the gift of holiness; and all women are... well, they are a bit more fleshed out in the film and considered as individuals, rather than as a bulk indistinguishable from one another.
I cannot recommend watching this film to anybody, but maybe for those whom may feel reassured in their convictions about human stereotypes in case they are coincident with those depicted in the film. Only one scene seemed to me of cinematographic value: when the daughter is watching through a passing train a bag lady carrying her trolley; as the different carriages pass by we can see in very short flashes the increasing expression of sorrow, desperation and realization of the bag lady desperate condition. Ana Fernández is fine in her role as the daughter.