Le Palace

End-of-year show at the Cineclub this evening, so here's a glimpse of downtown Lézignan while we were enjoying a Spanish-style buffet in the street ... wearing coats, in the middle of June.

It was a double bill of two very different Spanish films: Blancanieves and La Isla Minima. The people who choose the films for the club do a great job -- they're often not films I'd have gone to see otherwise, and I can only remember one that I didn't enjoy. Blancanieves is a silent black and white film based on the story of Snow White -- but in this one the dwarves are matadors, and Blancanieves herself is the daughter of a famous matador. The photography was just beautiful; it it had an authentic, grainy and high-contrast look in keeping with the 1920s setting. Costumes, make-up and music were all fabulous too. It's impressive how few inter-titles were needed to convey meaning; everything was there in the scene, the expressions, the gestures. It dragged a bit in the middle, but overall we enjoyed it.


La Isla Minima was very different: a sleazy cop thriller about the murder and mutilation of young girls in the badlands of the Guadalquivir delta. The plot isn't in the least original, but again the photography was gorgeous, and the film was really about the characters and relationship of the two cops in an immediate post-Franco Spain. Extra props for a dramatic car chase involving a 2CV. There was never a dull moment in this film.