As seen on screen (2)
03 April 2006. Inspired by this month's movie magic.
Another month, another sarcastic InMadrid European film column. This one's aimed at lovers of both the kazoo and comedies about Romanian immigrants. Si, señor.
I can't wait till I grow old. I'm going to do it disgracefully, turning myself in to one of those randy old buggers who flirts outrageously with young girls, and manages to get in a quick grope or two "because he's harmless enough, bless 'im."
Someone like Javier Krahe in fact, a white-bearded madrileño singer-songwriter-kazoo player in the folk tradition, who started his current career aged 30 (when he already looked 50).
"Before I was a singer, I still didn't have a job," he says at one point in Esta no es la vida privada de Javier Krahe, an enjoyable documentary following the man himself on the road around Spain, spliced together with concert footage. Now in his 60s, he still plays more than 70 gigs a year to impressively mixed-age crowds in small Spanish towns where everyone wears the same mullet.
His songs are engagingly daft, mostly about love, life, chasing women and wondering where your woman's got to (and did she leave anything in the fridge?).
Krahe was briefly controversial in the early 80s when he was asked to appear in a televised concert, and he sang a song against Spain's impending entry into NATO, while dressed as a Red Indian. The real controversy came when TVE's cameras, clearly forewarned, refused to include it in their coverage. It was a fleeting, albeit slightly worrying moment in the early years of Spanish democracy, but hardly worth more than a scribbled note in the margin of a photocopied edition of the complete and unedited footnotes of Spanish history.
The film also tries to stir up trouble by gasping in horror at how a radical Catholic group was trying to sue Krahe for blasphemy on the back of some "anthropologically invaluable" short films he made in the 70s that mostly consist of him and his mates answering the telephone with their arses.
You should see this film not for any of that, but simply because it's pleasingly silly, as Javier proves himself the favourite uncle you never had, rolling spliffs, talking rubbish, trying to persuade the audience to buy him a beer ("in a dirty glass, please") and singing a lot of songs. Pilar Bardem, Alejandro Sanz, the owner of Cafe Central and plenty of others share their favourite Krahe stories along the way. There's probably a few too many songs for all but hardcore Krahites - this is essentially a one-hour TV documentary stretched to 85 minutes for a cinema release - but it's still enormous fun, and a great insight into the weirder side of traditional Spanish subculture.
Speaking of which, also out this month is Rock and Cat, a documentary about a recent reunion concert featuring all your favourite 80s Catalan rock bands. It's not quite 'This is Spinal Cat', but worth making the gag anyway. One for dedicated minority nostalgia freaks who, when they had hair, had it bad.
Meanwhile, from across the border, come not one but two French comedies this month, both about middle-aged love, proving the old adage that French films are just like buses - you wait ages for one, and then they're long and full of people you don't like.
In fact, neither film is what their makers set out to create, one for better, one for worse. Eres Muy Guapo is an odd film. The first half is an enjoyably dark and dry comedy about a bald man's search for a woman who can help muck out at his farm. He ends up joining a marriage agency that takes him to Romania for a mail-order bride. His eventual choice, Elena, tells him nothing of her life in Bucharest, and leaves behind her own child so that she can earn enough money in the west to support her family. From then on, she resolves to make the best of it by searching for redeeming features in her sour patron.
The film is being sold as a romantic comedy about love in unexpected places, and that's clearly what they started out trying to write, but in fact it becomes a far more interesting reflection on the human need for tenderness and respect even where love is utterly absent.
Elena may be in it for the money, but she's definitely not a prostitute. She is providing companionship to someone who she is trying desperately hard to like. The money is a consequence of that, but not the only reason that she's with him. The distinction may seem a vacuous one, but she needs it to retain her own self-respect, which is all she has left in this strange country. But if he refuses to show any affection towards her, how long can she remain without losing her only emotional crutch?
It's an emotionally complex and subtle point that no sooner has poked its head above ground than is squashed to a bloodied mess by the rom-com steamroller, dragging the screaming plot behind it to a clichéed and unconvincing conclusion. Though it really does get very dull very quickly, there's still an interesting film in there somewhere, so see the first half and then leave when the music gets soppy.
And at least it wasn't Cuando Sube la Marea, a low-budget sleeper hit in France about a comedienne and a man who carries giant papier-mache effigies known as 'gigantes' around the streets of the town on public holidays. "Aren't we just quirky and crazy and full of romantic spontaneity?" giggles the film coquettishly. "Oh sod off, you're not Amelie, so stop trying," grumps the audience, before rolling over and going to sleep. The love affair isn't believable, the characters are inconsistent and the plot is dull.
There are a few vaguely redeeming features, such as the lead actress's performance - but even mushroom clouds are pretty, and you won't catch me hurrying to launch any nuclear missiles. Except, perhaps, at the makers of 'kooky' French romantic comedies. A gigante mess to be avoided.