A dramatic and really tragic story about hopeless loves and distresses . A quality film with certain plot limitations , but which is undoubtedly interesting , because there are not many stories about women in the big screen . Director Paula Ortiz presents three independent stories focused on women at different moments in time , dealing with their emotional journey . As Violeta (Leticia Dolera), a young bourgeois living with her uncle Fernando (Carlos Álvarez-Nóvoa) she is sick with love in a place located in the Pyrenees, in 1923 . The second one set in post-Spanish-Civil-War concerning a housewife called Inés (Maribel Verdú), a pregnant peasant looking for her unfortunate husband (Roberto Alamo) who's in a jail . And last story focused on another ill woman , it travels to the Spanish Transition to portray Luisa (Luisa Gavasa), a mature woman living with her sister (Cristina Rota) and suffering from cancer who realizes how little she has lived and loved.cThey are three women who do not give up their dreams despite the world trying to take them away.
It's kind of a Spanish response to Stephen Daldry's movie ¨Las Horas¨ (2002) . This film contains emotions and struggles of three women of different generations aiming to build the lives they desire , their own future, love and dreams . All of them lose the love of their lives and they will have to pursue their happiness and fight for their dignity in a dark and hostile word . It is not that the film is perfect , since it has several limitations of great significance. On the one hand, the lack of any plot interconnection between the stories means that these , fail to form a whole. The intention is very clear: to talk about how women have to face prejudice , intolerance , oppression and their own personal demons to survive in an adverse world that tries to bring them down . A brooding and thought-provoking movie by dissecting the reasons for pain and suffering so that the viewer can identify with the characters and accompany them on their hapless travel . Eventually , Paula Ortiz's film seeks also transmit a message of hope , autonomy and strength. The ordeal that its protagonists go through helps them to become more self-confident people, more willing to fight with claws and teeth for what they have and for what they want .
The film is formed by three main stories with plenty of love , sensibility , emotion and sadness . Giving a great visual work of who takes care of each shot and each image as if it were like a painting , also using a variety of resources to exploit the contextual and temporal differences between the three stories . Each section works separately, but the whole is only the sum of these parts, it is not sublimated with their addition into something more complex. On the other hand, the development of the stories is nice , but both Violeta's and Inés's are too topical and indebted to the classic scheme of their corresponding approaches. The first is highly influenced by the unleashed , tragic and folkloric romanticism of the turn of the century ; the second is a simple post-war story that so many of us have seen in the Spanish history . In front of them, the one that stands out without a doubt is the exciting story of Luisa, and not only because Luisa Gavasa offers the best interpretation of them all and because her tale and conflicts are the least hackneyed, and the agreeable evolution is the most interesting and sincere , though the remaining cast : Maribel Verdu, Leticia Dolera , Roberto Alamo , Pablo Rivera , Carlos Novoa , Ramón Barea , Luis Bermejo, Julián Villagrán deliver all of them impeccable performances .
Nice direction by a new and with big future filmmaker named Paula Ortiz (La Novia 2015) . Being shot on gorgeous locations in Bardenas Reales, Navarra, Estación de Canfranc, Huesca, Los Bañales, Uncastillo, Zaragoza, Aragón, and Sádaba, Zaragoza, Aragón, Spain . Adding an spiritual and esoteric musical score by Avshalom Caspi . Its formal attractiveness thanks to cameraman Migue Amoedo is in many moments hypnotic, captivating, stimulating, providing an enormous pictorial talent, although in others it can become too saturated. There are scenes, in fact, in which her aesthetic proposal can be corny , empty or use too obvious a symbolism, especially in the scene that closes the film, whose catharsis is too pretentious and even pamphleteering. Fortunately, these moments of excess fail to detract from her aesthetic strength, which is more marked both for being a newcomer director and for coming from the cinema of our country, which is not characterized precisely by the formal care or the visual beauty . The picture achieved several Nominations and Prizes , such as : ASECAN 2013 Winner Award Best Cinematography Migue Amoedo. Sant Jordi Awards 2013 Winner Sant Jordi Best Spanish Actress Leticia Dolera . Shanghai International Film Festival 2012 Winner Golden Goblet Best Musicc Avshalom Caspi. Winner Terenci Moix Award Best Film Production Kike Mora. Toulouse Cinespaña 2012 Winner Best Cinematography Migue Amoedo Nominee Violette d'Or Paula Ortiz. Valladolid International Film Festival 2011 Winner Pilar Miró Award Best New Director . Dhaka International Film Festival 2014 Nominee Women Film Maker's Section Award Best Fiction Award Paula Ortiz . Goya Awards 2012 Nominee Goya Best Supporting Actress Maribel Verdú , Best New Director Paula Ortiz Best Original Song Avshalom Caspi Alis Garcia For the song "Debajo del limón". Spanish Actors Union 2012 Nominee Award of the Spanish Actors Union Film: Supporting Performance, Female Maribel Verdú.
