Cineastes
Find the path
Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias. While Oscar season is proceeding apace, last night saw the Spanish equivalent, the Goyas. I only heard the results this morning on the radio and it seems that the only one of the contenders that I saw won all the main prizes. It was called ‘Camino’ which can mean way or path (with an additional sense of pilgrimage, like in the Camino de Santiago). It was a well made film, and a bit controversial here.
It opens with a deathbed scene, a young girl is dying and her hospital room is filled with and surrounded by priests, nuns and praying medical staff. Then we’re off into flashback mode for most of the rest of the film where we see how the priests have come to believe that this girl is on the path to sainthood. She talks about Jesus with longing, she sees angels, she’s dying of cancer… The film shows us that one Jesus she talks about is a boy in her school, but the priests and nurses and nuns don’t know that… We see her visions but they are also explained as a symptom of cancer. At the end, her death becomes a big church affair and her family are pushed to the side as the priests strain to hear her last words. It’s apparently based on a true story. As I said, well made, but a little too polemical. Definitely worth seeing if it comes out in the UK.
In a lighter vein, we went to the cinema to see ‘Welcome to the North’ last night, which was a charming French comedy that has probably already been on in the UK. It was a good film to see dubbed, because a lot of the humour was related to the accent and peculiarities of the place. I’m not sure what Spanish accent they used to show the difference but it was probably something along the lines of Southerners doing Geordie….
Tags: film
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