Amador (2010) User Reviews

For the corpse, flowers will grow

[FunchoExpress · 8/10 · 12 December 2011]

A South American immigrant, an unfaithful boyfriend, a prostitute at the end of her carrier, an old man left to rest, by his family, till the death comes an takes her prize. All this characters coexist in a very bizarre, yet simple and believable way. These are the characters that we see across our daily routine, transposed, from reality to fiction, without losing any of their authenticity.

Flowers celebrate life, love and death, and connect both the ends of the limited and closed interval where we stand. The flowers are the most visible and important adornment in this film. Even though they are natural flowers, they need some help to intensify their perfume. Reference, perhaps, to the constant element of artificiality in our lives. Reference to the art of pretending.

The film has a constant and intense summer light. It flows from brief moments of joy and humor to introspection. Dialogues of simple minds, that reach well under the surface of the common places.

This is a simple story, told magnificently.

A tale of plans gone awry

[pontifikator · 8/10 · 28 April 2012]

I watched this on DVD with subtitles.

This is a great movie. It's about Marcela, a South American living in Spain and facing mild discrimination because she's an immigrant taking jobs away from Spaniards. She lives with Nelson. Nelson is a man with a plan: he's got a gang of guys who steal dead flowers from the garbage heap, then Nelson cleans them up and sells them to local wandering flower sellers. His goal is to have a real flower shop (he's working out of their one-room apartment) with delivery trucks. He plans to call the store "Marcela's Flowers."

However, they aren't making enough money to pay the rent, and their refrigerator breaks down. So Marcela takes a job looking after a dying man named Amador. Amador and Marcela have some conversations as time goes by, and he tells her his theory of life, which she rejects out of hand.

Then a problem arises. Amador dies. Marcela is to be paid at the end of each month she looks after Amador, and he didn't live even that long. She needs the whole month's wage to pay off the new refrigerator. Marcela decides to just continue as if Amador were alive, intending to collect the full month's pay on the assumption that his daughter won't come back to visit (which is entirely possible), then worry about the discovery of his long-dead body when that time comes.

The great thing about the movie is Marcela's growth during this time of trouble. Magaly Solier plays Marcela, and she's wonderful as the poor immigrant who needs money and can't get a break. The key to the story is Amador's putting together of a picture puzzle, another thing that Marcela rejects: why not just buy the picture -- it's the same thing? However, Amador's rejected advice includes the idea that you have all the pieces of the puzzle of your life handed to you at birth, and you just have to figure out what they are and put them together to see the big picture.

Watching Marcela puzzle through her life in those few weeks is sad, humorous, and heartening. Director Fernando Leon de Aranoa does a very good job with a very good cast. He also wrote the screenplay. I highly recommend this movie.

Film noir with attempts at humor---how to keep a cadaver from smelling too much

[rome1-595-390251 · 8/10 · 4 August 2014]

Everyone needs money. Marcela a South American immigrant living in Spain is pregnant--her hustling husband wants to set up a flower store and needs to make payments on a refrigerator--the children of Almador need his pension to complete their new house. A 50s something prostitute visits Almador once a week for 30 Euros.

The source of the money is the pension of Almador,a bed ridden sick elderly man, who Marcela is hired to take care of.

He dies. How do you keep the money coming in at least in the short run?

The actress who does Marcela is great...just perfect but so is the prostitute. There are attempts at comedy but somehow they don't work very well since you have in your mind the whole time of how the cadaver must look and smell--not something that puts you in a mood to laugh.

Is it possible for a film noir to attempt humor that is what this movie does.

Beautifully filmed and acted and different. There are lots of things you can read into it too....wilted flowers...the refrigerator making a noise when the door is open....the rotting cadaver all of it ties together.

RECOMMEND

basic story

[Vincentiu · 16 November 2012]

about solitude, flowers, life sense, hope as heart of interior fight. a young woman, an old man, a church,a Thursday special secret cure,friend a house. and slices , like the clouds, of silence. nothing else. all - as a puzzle. or just a delicate - profound parable, drawing of gestures and thinks, dream of a next existence. in fact, it is only picture of a state of mind. seed. ladder. all - as skin and respiration for magnificent , touching, powerful beauty.it is a kind of confession. collection of letters, speech, photo crumbs. testimony. about small elementary things. and, maybe, cloth for fairy tale. about a Cinderella for who the future is the perfect Charming Prince.

Good if you watch it at 1.5 speed

[jjueves · 7/10 · 22 February 2021]

Otherwise it gets too long - love the mixing of death/birth/marriage issues and specially the bonding a shared secret can create.

Poetic, beautiful, brilliant, sad, funny, and moving

[antoniatejedabarros · 10/10 · 23 October 2020]

Amador is a a tale about love, death, life, hope, and change. Brilliantly written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, the film has an outstanding leading cast (Magaly Solier and Celso Bugallo) and beautiful music. Besides the sadness and despair, Fernando León de Aranoa manages, as always, to paint the film with humor and hope. Poetic, beautiful, brilliant, sad, funny, and moving. Masterpiece. 10 / 10

flowers

[Kirpianuscus · 30 July 2017]

the flowers around the presence of people. the people. in ordinary gesture and words and habits. like far silhouettes. a film of states. about errors, dreams, illusions, answers. a young woman. and her boyfriend. an old man. and the life as a large plain who becomes more and more strange. not the story, so simple, not the performances, inspired sketches, maybe not the look of the young woman but the emotion after the end of it defines "Amador". and this is all. a story about flowers and about people as silhouettes.