The title speaks volumes about each character's deeply entrenched
emotional state in "Solas," a soul-clenching Spanish import
dominated last year's Goya awards (the Spanish Oscar).
"Solas" translates as "alone," and it's a story about a bitterly
estranged mother and daughter, forced back into each other's lives
by the hospitalization of their hateful husband/father.
Maria (Ana Fernandez), whose life is filled with anger and
alcohol, escaped her loveless, farm country home and moved to the
city as soon as she was of age, after coming to despise her parents
through a history the movie only hints at. She is alone because her
entire personality is a defense mechanism. Through an adult life of
hardship, she's learned to distrust everyone, and she won't let the
people who really do care about her anywhere near her heart.
Her weary, withered and aged mother (Maria Galiana) is alone in
her own heart as well after a lifetime of holding her tongue around
her choleric, belittling husband -- whose heart attack has landed
him in a hospital near their daughter's slum-bordering apartment
building.
While Maria refuses to visit her ailing father, she begrudgingly
feels obligated to take her mother in until her parents can return
to the country. The climate between the two women is instantly
acrimonious. But slowly, tentatively, they begin to set aside their
practiced antagonism and repair the lines of communication in their
relationship.
The driving force of this film is the soul-level sadness in the
profoundly affecting performances of Fernandez and Galiana.
Fernandez roots around in the daughter's damaged psyche, finding
both her darkest and most vulnerable places, humanizing this
fatigued woman's bitter, hardened surface. Galiana depicts the depth
of the mother's loyalty, her complacency to an unhappy marriage and
her oblivious ability to push her daughter's buttons -- interfering
in the younger woman's life when she only means to help wash away
the overwhelming misery she sees in Maria's face.
Together they subtly portray a lifetime of barriers built between
them and hint at regrets they both hold but refuse to acknowledge.
Beautifully written and directed with sublime finesse by Benito
Zambrano -- who makes his feature debut -- "Solas" is not a movie
that turns warm and fuzzy in the last act with epiphanies or
apologies. It has a much more slight and delicate character arc that
sees mother and daughter beginning a long process of warming toward
each other and possibly discovering better lives in the process.
They are also both moved by separate, tentative relationships
with Maria's downstairs neighbor (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa), a
desperately lonely old man who becomes attached to the mother. The
time the elderly new friends spend together sees the mother blossom
anew, but this becomes another point of strife when she goes to the
hospital and her husband becomes enraged, saying he can smell
another man on her.
Zambrano's resourceful direction gives "Solas" an economic
elegance with powerful moments like the scene in which Maria visits
a free clinic to schedule an abortion after being thrown over by her
low-life lover. She scans the eyes of the other women in the waiting
room -- a pregnant teenager with an indignant mom, a woman beaten
black-and-blue -- then runs outside, where she slowly breaks down as
a train passes.
Zambrano positions the camera on the opposite side of the tracks,
focusing on Maria's face -- which is exposed in flashes between the
train cars -- as she disintegrates from a small tear into
emotionally draining wails.
It's an incredible shot, indicative of the kind of raw-nerve
sentiment that pulses through this potent, poignant, honest and
outstanding film.
From www.splicedonline.com
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