Maria Valverde is delightful to watch. She is without clothes for most of the movie. The guy is, too-but who cares about him? Maria is a natural beauty. Her nudity only compliments her beauty. The story basically depicts how someone's sense of modesty can be affected by circumstances. She is sometimes fully covered, half covered, or not covered at all. The movie's sexual overtones were unneeded. Her level of comfort in initially letting this guy see "everything" is just refreshing to watch. Maria, you're beautiful!
6 Reviews
Naked in the bathroom
jotix10018 June 2013
Warning: Spoilers
David Trueba, like most of his Spanish fellow directors, is a man with lots of ideas, which unfortunately rely on gimmicks to present this basically two character film that feels claustrophobic, not only in its setting, which takes place in a locked bathroom where a couple cannot escape from. The film is hermetic in form, relying on the fact that the couple is trapped inside a room with no possible solution for getting out of their predicament.
Miguel, a respected journalist, is admired by a young Angela, who wants to write and figures she can create an interest in the older man, whose only interest, plain and simple, is to have sex with the luscious woman. As the two get trapped, one thing comes out clear, Angela, with her young, supple body, stands in stark contrast against the aging Miguel, whose aging body is a turn off for Angela.
Mr. Trueba gives the best lines to Miguel, while poor Angela has nothing to show but her charms. The director makes sure his male star, Jose Sacristan is only photographed from the chest up, hiding his manhood from indiscreet exposure, but Maria Valverde has the difficult task of being a vulnerable and naked Angela.
When all is said and done, there is nothing but blah, blah, blah.
Miguel, a respected journalist, is admired by a young Angela, who wants to write and figures she can create an interest in the older man, whose only interest, plain and simple, is to have sex with the luscious woman. As the two get trapped, one thing comes out clear, Angela, with her young, supple body, stands in stark contrast against the aging Miguel, whose aging body is a turn off for Angela.
Mr. Trueba gives the best lines to Miguel, while poor Angela has nothing to show but her charms. The director makes sure his male star, Jose Sacristan is only photographed from the chest up, hiding his manhood from indiscreet exposure, but Maria Valverde has the difficult task of being a vulnerable and naked Angela.
When all is said and done, there is nothing but blah, blah, blah.
..this is twilight zone material
bjarias11 October 2014
Please, you can push some boundaries maybe some of the time... but this is beyond bizarre!! This beautiful, intelligent, young woman .. binged.it/1sxD2zK .. is going to get herself totally naked, pretty much just on the suggestion that she should.. winding up locked in a dingy bathroom for a whole day, sharing one dirty towel, with an old bag of nicotine laced Sacristán bones. And ya gotta buy into her doing all this, for really not so much any meaningful reason. If that's not enough in itself, she then incredibly winds up getting it on (literally) with him.. more than once!! And then as unfathomably as it all began, it ends abruptly with placement of doubt as towards the future. In just what universe is this all EVER going to remotely happen.
Had potential but pretentious and mostly boring
grantss16 May 2015
Had potential but pretentious and mostly boring.
Mardrid 1987 had heaps of potential: themes like the passing on of knowledge from generation to generation, experience vs youthful innovation, formula vs originality.
Yet, it just scratches the surface on these themes. Instead it is overly consumed with hearing an old guy bloviate on all kinds of meaningless, pretentious things.
The only saving grace is the girl who is stunningly beautiful and tempers some of the old guy's painful speeches. Unfortunately, she doesn't come any where near to balancing it out: he has about 90% of the dialogue... A much better movie would have been where she counters every in-my-day diatribe or senseless musing with some witticism of her own.
On that note, here's hoping to see Maria Velverde in many more movies. She is the only reason to watch this, ultimately.
Mardrid 1987 had heaps of potential: themes like the passing on of knowledge from generation to generation, experience vs youthful innovation, formula vs originality.
Yet, it just scratches the surface on these themes. Instead it is overly consumed with hearing an old guy bloviate on all kinds of meaningless, pretentious things.
The only saving grace is the girl who is stunningly beautiful and tempers some of the old guy's painful speeches. Unfortunately, she doesn't come any where near to balancing it out: he has about 90% of the dialogue... A much better movie would have been where she counters every in-my-day diatribe or senseless musing with some witticism of her own.
On that note, here's hoping to see Maria Velverde in many more movies. She is the only reason to watch this, ultimately.
Pervert movie not entirely without merit.
michaelmalak30 October 2014
It's not a masterpiece, but it's an important movie that I'm glad was made and that I was fortunate enough to see.
Like changing a diaper, this film is not fragrant or glamorous, but outlines a very basic reality of the man-woman relationships; Old wrinkled geezer wanting to get into panties of a young and beautiful girl, just for the heck of it, just to feel alive for a little longer. And the young beautiful girl not unwilling to let him - just for the opportunity to spice-up her dull existence, learn something (anything) from an older, more experienced person, And maybe, just-maybe, forward her artistic career as a result of it.
And for us, old geezers, it's an opportunity to look in the mirror and see how pathetic we look, literally and figuratively speaking.
Important movie.
Like changing a diaper, this film is not fragrant or glamorous, but outlines a very basic reality of the man-woman relationships; Old wrinkled geezer wanting to get into panties of a young and beautiful girl, just for the heck of it, just to feel alive for a little longer. And the young beautiful girl not unwilling to let him - just for the opportunity to spice-up her dull existence, learn something (anything) from an older, more experienced person, And maybe, just-maybe, forward her artistic career as a result of it.
And for us, old geezers, it's an opportunity to look in the mirror and see how pathetic we look, literally and figuratively speaking.
Important movie.
(Pandering to) Too many film festivals
lor_26 June 2023
Self-indulgence best describes this exercise in navel-gazing, hardly the experimental film it pretends to be. As a point of reference I recently watched the BTS short subject about making Aronofsky's "The Whale" and it turned out to be a lengthy defense of how the director and crew so carefully and creatively worked out the blocking and design/camera moves for a movie essentially set in a single room, where invalid Brendon Fraser spends his existence trapped in his fat suit. We're supposed to be impressed how Aronofsky painstakingly solves the filmmaking problem of a self-imposed constriction of space and movement, in pursuit of expressing the play-to-film's story and themes. Needless to say, I was not impressed at all.
Similarly, but even less successfully, writer-director David Trueba stages "Madrid 1987" in a locked bathroom, where the Old Man and the Beautiful Female Student have a dialectical and boring discussion of innumerable topics, centered on the role of journalism, and reflecting by infeence the problems of Trueba as a screenwriter. Plenty of tasteful nudity is included, and casting an old actor immediately diffuses the inherent notion of "it's just sexploitation" as his presence negates eroticism. A remake would undoubedly cast two female beauties of contrasting ages for surefire lesbian hot content.
It's neither believable nor involving, especially with actress Maria Valverde cool as a cucumber. And most of the intellectual, social and political themes are banal and unenlightening. My immediate reaction, reflecting my own personal bias as a long-time film buff, is that "Madrid 1987" is a prime example of what I call "Film Festival-itis". Namely, making a film to be consumed (and hopefully thereby springboarded to bigger & better things) on the international film festival circuit by consciously tailoring its content to fit the whims and preferences of the film fest gatekeepers.
That's why so many pretentious movies emphasize sexual content - folks programming festivals are intrinsically voyeurs (having a job of sorting through literally thousands of movie submissions) and generally prefer minimalism to any other format (check out the favorite auteurs of festivals over the years, e.g., Akerman, Greenaway, Straub, Angelopoulos, Fassbinder, Meszaros, Tanner, Olmi, Tarr, Bresson, Jarmusch). So I wasn't surprised after watching "Madrid 1987" to see in IMDb its history of film festival exposure, from Europe to Sundance.
Similarly, but even less successfully, writer-director David Trueba stages "Madrid 1987" in a locked bathroom, where the Old Man and the Beautiful Female Student have a dialectical and boring discussion of innumerable topics, centered on the role of journalism, and reflecting by infeence the problems of Trueba as a screenwriter. Plenty of tasteful nudity is included, and casting an old actor immediately diffuses the inherent notion of "it's just sexploitation" as his presence negates eroticism. A remake would undoubedly cast two female beauties of contrasting ages for surefire lesbian hot content.
It's neither believable nor involving, especially with actress Maria Valverde cool as a cucumber. And most of the intellectual, social and political themes are banal and unenlightening. My immediate reaction, reflecting my own personal bias as a long-time film buff, is that "Madrid 1987" is a prime example of what I call "Film Festival-itis". Namely, making a film to be consumed (and hopefully thereby springboarded to bigger & better things) on the international film festival circuit by consciously tailoring its content to fit the whims and preferences of the film fest gatekeepers.
That's why so many pretentious movies emphasize sexual content - folks programming festivals are intrinsically voyeurs (having a job of sorting through literally thousands of movie submissions) and generally prefer minimalism to any other format (check out the favorite auteurs of festivals over the years, e.g., Akerman, Greenaway, Straub, Angelopoulos, Fassbinder, Meszaros, Tanner, Olmi, Tarr, Bresson, Jarmusch). So I wasn't surprised after watching "Madrid 1987" to see in IMDb its history of film festival exposure, from Europe to Sundance.
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