Film dealing with a young translator called Nat (Laia Costa in her second collaboration with Isabel Coixet, following Foodie Love, 2019) with internal wounds that she tries to heal, to this end she moves to a town where she only finds hostility, paternalism and aggressiveness. Upon settling in the countryside village of La Escapa, Nat accepts a disturbing sexual proposal by neighbour Andreas (Hovik Keuchkerian) , paving the way for a self-consuming passion. There she also meets other peculiar characters, crossing paths with people who infantilize her, judge her or mistreat her.
Isabel Coixet (¨Mi vida sin mi¨) faithfully adapts the novel of the same name by Sara Mesa. An uncomfortable and reflective story, starring Laia Costa (¨Cinco Lobitos¨) and Hovik Keuchkerian (¨Antidisturbios¨), which reflects the normalized microviolence suffered by the translator Nat with some internal wounds that she tries to repair, but things get worse when it is seen immersed in a conflictive love relationship and a certain animosity from other inhabitants of the town with full of unfriendly and unpleasant roles. Completing the cast of the film that was nominated for seven Goyas 2024 awards, appearing the following: Luis Bermejo (Magical Girl) as Nat's unpleasant landlord, Hugo Silva (¨El ministerio del Tiempo¨) as impertinent neighbor who wants a relationship with her, and Ingrid Gracia Jonsson (¨Bella juventud or Beautiful Youth¨) as the pedantic neighbor.
This tiring film belongs to a recent trend in Spanish cinema of making almost documentary films, made on low budgets, and dealing mostly with rural stories, or a few urban ones, and in which the lives of a few characters or families inserted in these environments are described. These films in which hardly anything happens are usually overlong and very heavy and dull, such as: "Verano 1993", "Las niñas", ¨Secaderos¨,¨O corno¨, "Libertad", ¨las Gentiles¨, ¨20,000 especies de abejas¨and most of them made by women directors, and whose main representive is Carla Simón. All of them heavily financed by the national government, autonomous governments, ICAA, which is not understood as these films made in documentary style, with a camera over the shoulder and with minimal budgets, with no known actors, neither technicians, need so much public financing and state subsidies. This Un amor(2023) is no an exception, which also turned out to be a tiresome film, with hardly any incidents, with simply contemplative scenes or meaningless and inconsequential conversations and mostly boring; only a good cast of well-known actors giving nice performances stands out.
This dull and downbeat film was mediocrely directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet following her ordinary feeling style. Coixet is a fine professional, and she is usually the camera operator of her movies. Isabel is a nice craftsman who has made thoughtful and heartful films , such as : A los que Aman , Map of Sounds of Tokyo , Another me, The Secret Life of Words , Things I Never Told You , Endless Night , Learning to Drive, Elisa and Mariela . And his greatest hits were Another Me , Bookshop. She also has made some documentary and shorts as Proyecto Tiempo , Sea Aral, Espíritu de la Pintura , Marea Blanca , Marlango, Spain in a Day and a segment of París Je taim, among others . ¨Un amor (2023)¨ rating : 4.5/ 10. Only for completists of the extraordinary cinematic career of Isabel Coixet .
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