Advantages of traveling by train (2019) is a film as daring as it is bizarre and, without a doubt, unclassifiable, developing strange stories involving three separate chapters, being apparently independent, Advantages of traveling by train tells the story of the editor Helga Pato (Pilar Castro), a woman in her forties who by chance meets the psychiatrist Ángel Sanagustín (Ernesto Alterio) on a train trip, who tells her (first chapter) the story of one of his patients. Ángel tells Helga the story of Martín Urales de Úbeda, an extremely dangerous paranoid patient obsessed, among other things, with garbage. Martín Urales (Luís Tosar), who enlisted in the army, was sent to fight in the Kosovo War where he met Dr. Linares, a determined and compassionate woman who, when trying to create a children's hospital to cure the damage of the war, She is forced to make a great deal: In exchange for having the hospital she wants, Linares must take one child a month to her benefactors to film adult and snuff films.
Winner of the best film award at the Feroz 2020 awards, it is an ensemble film that mixes suspense, comedy, drama, horror, gore and probably some other genres. It is an unclassifiable coming and going made up of several strangely connected stories, although they are very uneven, some being frankly unpleasant, others disturbing, giving rise to a discouraging result. One of the most surprising recent Spanish films in which thorny themes are mixed, such as male domination, Diogenes syndrome, human abuse and others, meanwhile it unexpectedly delves into dark tunnels that show terrifyingly funny passages, which They get lost in recesses that are the materialization of that interior in which we keep all the psychological breakdowns, traumas, fears, lies and half-truths that characterize us. Filmador Moreno goes from one place to another without losing the global identity, connecting the dots that apparently become loose, leaving things in suspense and then recovering them. The film is notable for its wonderful casting full of the best Spanish actors, giving good performances, with the three main actors standing out: Luis Tosar, Pilar Castro and Ernesto Alterio. Being accompanied by a very good supporting cast with many well-known faces, such as: Quim Gutiérrez, Belén Cuesta, Macarena García, Javier Godino, Javier Botet, Stéphanie Magnin, Ramón Barea, Alberto San Juan, Manuel Morón, among others.
The film plays with reality and fiction, with madness and sanity, and black humor, to translate the novel of the same title written by Antoni Orejudo. As debut director Aritz Moreno explains: "When I read the book, I saw a movie in my head: a peculiar and unusual film like the novel, but that is precisely what attracted me." The novel was adapted by Javier Gullón, who already did an excellent job adapting the initially unadaptable novel: The Duplicated Man by José Samarago, which director Dennis Villenueve turned into the film The Enemy. The film was original but unevenly made by Director Aritz Moreno in his debut film.
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