“I knew her very well,” says Penelope Cruz, “but in a way she was not exactly the same person because so many things happened to her and she changed over time, like we all do.”
Cruz isn’t talking about an old friend or a long lost relative. The Spanish superstar is referring to Macarena Granada, a character she first played a decade ago and revisits in the new film The Queen of Spain.
“She has a very intense life,” continues Cruz, “so that was the tricky thing. For the people who knew Macarena, how do I make her recognizable and what are the changes we can see in her after all these years?”
Audiences first met Macarena in 1998 when Cruz played her as an upcoming Spanish movie star in a frothy little confection called The Girl of Your Dreams. It’s years later in real and reel life as Cruz brings the character back to the screen.
Set in 1956, The Queen of Spain portrays Macarena as a huge international star lured back to her home country to star in the first American movie to be shot there since the Franco took power. It’s a wild production but complicating matters is the appearance—and subsequent disappearance—of Macarena’s former director and the man who made her a star.
“The first film was set at a time of interaction with Germany and Macarena had to protect herself from Goebbels,” says Cruz. “This time she is up against Franco. In a way every time she is acting in a film she is just not acting, she is some kind of political heroine. She is fighting for justice. What a life this woman has had! Every time she goes into making a movie she has to save somebody’s life or do something life changing for everybody. If we ever do the third one I don’t know who she’ll have to deal with. Depends on what country. Hopefully the third one will happen someday. Let’s see who she has to encounter this time.”
The Queen of Spain marks the third time Cruz has worked with Fernando Trueba, the Spanish auteur who directed her break out film Belle Époque.
“The knowledge he has of cinema, the passion he has for cinema is very contagious,” she says. “With Fernando it is always more than just entertainment. He is such a great filmmaker and he always talks about so many big subjects at the same time.
“I think Belle Époque is a masterpiece. The film was amazing and for me to start with somebody as brilliant as Fernando, well, it was a year that made it impossible for me not to fall in love with movies.”
The chance to show what goes on behind the scenes in The Queen of Spain’s film-within-the-film was another reason she decided to come back to Trueba and Macarena.
“There are not enough movies about that,” she says. “When I am on the set everything is so crazy and chaotic but at the same time it works. I feel like we need that chaos for it to work. It is magical that things happen and movies get done and get finished. I’m always on the set thinking, ‘These three days of shooting is enough material for three more movies.’”
Almost fifty years ago Simon & Garfunkel provided the memorable soundtrack to the equally memorable movie “The Graduate.” This year a wistful S&G song, “The Only Living Boy in New York,” inspired a wry movie of the same name by director Marc Webb.
Set in New York City, the movie centers around Thomas Webb (Callum Turner), a recent college grad in love with his best friend good friend, Mimi (Kiersey Clemons). When she rejects his romantic entreaties he’s crushed. Back at home in his parents Ethan and Judith’s (Pierce Brosnan and Cynthia Nixon) swanky Upper West Side apartment building he meets the boozy new neighbour, W.F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges), an author and sage who offers life advice.
When Thomas learns about Ethan’s affair with Johanna (Kate Beckinsale) he first becomes obsessed with learning more about her and then, perhaps to make Mimi jealous and possibly in an ode to “The Graduate,” begins a romantic affair with the older woman. Navigating his complicated personal life brings his combative relationship with the grizzled Ethan—who once told his son, a wannabe writer, that his work was only “serviceable”—in focus while opening his eyes to the world around him.
“The Only Living Boy in New York” doesn’t have the buoyancy of “(500) Days of Summer,” Webb’s other study of the way relationships work and, sometimes, how they don’t work. It’s more quasi-Phillip Roth than RomCom but it is propped up with some terrific performances.
English born actor Callum is cut from the Benjamin Braddock school of lovesick, confused young man, but it’s the seasoned pros who are worth the price of admission. Nixon is brittle yet steely as a long time New Yorker who was friends with Andy Warhol and mourns the loss of Greenwich Village’s famed Bottom Line club. Beckinsale is more than a plot device, bringing real humanity to a woman caught between the two men.
Bridges, now firmly entrenched in the old coot phase of his career, brings craggy charm to the role of mentor but it is Brosnan who shines. He’s at his best as a man who is simultaneously a father and romantic rival to his son.
“The Only Living Boy in New York” frequently feels like it is about to spin off its axis but Webb fights past the clunky dialogue and overly complicated story to present an engaging coming-of-age story.
In “The Space Between Us” Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) is a regular kid with the usual litany of teen problems. Slightly nerdy and a tad socially awkward, he passes the time texting with Tulsa (Britt Robertson), a pretty girl he’s never actually met. You see, Gardner is a normal teen in all respects except one—he lives on Mars.
Raised by scientists on the Red Planet after his astronaut mother died in childbirth Gardner lives in a settlement called East Texas founded by scientist Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman). As the only human ever born on Mars he’s alone, save for an R2-D2 clone called Centaur, astronaut/guardian Kendra (Carla Gugino) and a team of scientists. He longs for information about his mother so when the chance to return to Earth comes up on his sixteenth birthday he jumps at it, eager to track down Tulsa and find his biological father.
On Earth he marvels at the colour of the sky, the feel of the ocean but worries that he’ll be sent back to Mars before he has the chance to really live. He escapes, on a quest to find Tulsa and daddy, a man he never met. The boy who fell to Earth finds Tulsa and together they go off in search of papa with Shepherd and Kendra hot on their tails.
Is “The Space Between Us” a sci-fi film? Ish! Is it a teen adventure? Almost! Is it a doomed teen movie? Sorta! A romance? Not really! A fish out of water flick? Kinda! Is it a road trip? Maybe! It’s all those things and more wrapped up in an underwhelming Young Adult story.
At the centre of it all is Butterfield whose wide eyes give him a slightly otherworldly look, perfectly suited to play Tulsa’s favourite Martian. Robertson is spunky and even if everything that happens doesn’t really make sense, the two leads are appealing.
They stand in stark contrast to Oldman chews the scenery with unusual gusto. He over does it all the way, emoting as if acting was going to be declared illegal the next day and he’d never have a chance to do it again.
“The Space Between Us” a.k.a. “The Loneliest Boy On Mars” has some good moments but in its attempt to be all things—see paragraph four of this review—clutters up a story that would have been better served by streamlining the story and tone.
Collateral Beauty had a long Hollywood history before director David Frankel came on board. Hugh Jackman was attached at one point and Rachel McAdams had been approached to play a part.
The long development came to an end when Will Smith signed on to play Howard Inlet, a charismatic advertising kingpin who becomes despondent after the death of his six-year-old daughter.
“When I came on it, it felt like it was written in stone,” says Frankel. “Everybody loved the screenplay and we were going in three months and then people started whispering, ‘I wish we could fix that.’ So it turned out to be a pretty normal development process where we tried a lot of stuff.
“Once the actors got involved, Professor Will Smith, Professor Edward Norton and Professor Kate Winslet, there was a lot more writing. Mostly condensing. Edward had this brilliant vision of the movie as a screwball comedy, which I think was really smart. Will always said, ‘We have to make the first half of the movie as funny as possible so that we don’t kill people.’ We worked on that.”
The changes continued into the shooting. In the story Howard spends his nights practising self-therapy, writing angry letters to the abstractions of Time, Love and Death demanding answers as to why his child was taken. In the original script he met the abstractions, personified by Jacob Latimore, Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren, in a different order than in the finished film.
“It was written where he first ran into Love, then Time then Death,” says Frankel. “We shot them in the order, Death, Time, Love so as we were approaching Love Will and I were still arguing about whether Love should be first or last in the sequence.
“We had prepped for six months up to that moment thinking Love was first. He came to me the day before and said, ‘I think Love should be last.’ I fought him tooth and nail about it because I really thought that moment on the train when he confronts Death was the pivotal moment and then it rained and because of the weather (the shots) wouldn’t have matched. The sequence wouldn’t have made sense.
“Of course Will said, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ But Will Smith got his way. Big surprise.”
The movie details the anguish Howard feels and the steps his friends take to help him reconnect with the world.
“I have seen some pretty profound grief,” says Frankel. “My wife lost her mom six years ago and grief really can distort someone’s connection to the universe. I learned you don’t just get over it. That’s why the line Helen (Mirren) has, I think is the most profound line in the movie. ‘Nothing is really ever dead if you look at it right.’
“That I thought was really beautiful. That is how we all live on, in memory, not in fact.”
It may seem like an odd subject for a Christmas film but Frankel says, “In holiday movies you always want a sense of hope. That’s ultimately what we dreamed of for this movie.
“I know when Will saw it for the first time he ran to hug Willow who was in the audience with him. People want to connect and realize the fragility of our time here.”
“Collateral Beauty” tries desperately to be a feel good movie, but is really a feel bad flick. Or maybe it’s just a bad movie about the intersection where grief and greed cross.
When we first meet Howard Inlet (Will Smith) he’s a charismatic advertising kingpin giving his employees a pep talk that could raise the dead. He’s an inspiring figure but just three years later, after the death of his six-year-old daughter, he becomes despondent dude who sees his life, his time on the planet, as a prison sentence. He barely says a word, spending his days at work making giant domino mazes. Without his leadership the company hits hard times.
Fortunately his partners, best friend Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña), have a great offer that would see them all make a fortune. Unfortunately Howard, who owns sixty percent of the company, does not want to sell.
Determined to make the deal happen Howard’s three friends and partners conspire against him. When a private investigator discovers Howard spends his nights practising self-therapy, writing angry letters to the abstractions of Time, Love and Death, they concoct a plan to use the notes against him. “Howard is not in a good mental state,” says Whit. “It’s about underlining that fact so others can see it.
To that end they hire three actors, Raffi (Jacob Latimore), Aimee (Keira Knightley) and Brigitte (Helen Mirren) to personify Time, Love and Death. They are to approach Howard as the private eye video tapes them. Later they will digitally remove the actors and use the tapes to prove that Howard is not mentally fit to run the company. Bingo, bango they get their deal while Howard is left tormented by what he thinks must be bereavement hallucinations.
There’s more but that is the conceit fuelling “Collateral Beauty’s” story and therein lies the film’s main problem. It’s a really weird and not very nice idea. Watching Howard’s sad sack friends plotting against him while trying to convince one another—and us—that they are doing this for his own good is a singularly unpleasant experience. A little bit of nastiness at the holidays is never unwelcome. “It’s a Wonderful Life” has an undercurrent of meanness that nicely offsets the saccharine aspects of the story and it works. Here the characters grasp for justification of their awful behaviour and the film allows them to get away with it.
Layer that with a healthy dollop of pop psychology—“Nothing’s ever really dead if you look at it right.”—that rides the line between inane and inaner and you have a film that wants to be inspiring holiday fare but is instead a downer look at some of the worst of human behaviour.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
