Dir.
Fernando Leon de Aranoa, 2002, Spain/France/Italy, 113 min, subtitles
Cast:
Javier Bardem, Luis Tosar, José Ángel Egido, Nieve de Medina, Enrique Villén
Mondays In The Sun 's basic strength is apparent within minutes: its setting. This is a Spain that we Anglophones are not used to seeing from its cinema or television. It is a Spain where the picturesque, spectacular or interesting, must be inside the characters, for it surely isn't on display in the locations. This is a Spain of slightly mangy ferry boats, scuffed dole offices, bland bars and seedy tower blocks. It's a rarely-seen place: post-industrial Spain .
Stories from that place are consequently also rarely seen. Rico (an enjoyably low-key performance by Joaquin Climent), Amador (excellently played by Celso Bagel), Lino (José Ángel Egido), Jose (Tosar) and Santa (Bardem) are all unemployed, in a shipyard town now full of unemployment. This opens the way for a rich exploration of situations: Jose's discomfort at the fact his wife is the bread-winner; Lino's wince-inducing attempts to overcome his age and lack of relevant skills to get a job; Santa's twinkling arrogance can't remove the lack of status that came with his loss of a job.
Santa is the centre of the film, and indeed without Bardem's ability Mondays would perhaps have been swamped by its limitations. Bardem's playing of the character is adroit enough to command attention throughout - it has the watchable quality which all fine screen actors have in roles that suit them. Bardem's performance carries us through Mondays , but unfortunately Santa's expertly realised bonhomie, deviousness, honesty and sense of fun can't carry us past all its faults.
Chief amongst these is that it can't quite decide whether it's going to reveal things to us or make revelations out of them. The perspective in a scene often starts as observational, as if the camera were trying to sit back and watch; but sooner or later we crash in for revelations that feel forced upon us, our expectations of being able to watch things unfold having been raised. Director and co-screenwriter (with Ignacio del Moral) de Aranoa has a background dominated by documentaries - perhaps this is why there is the lack of that subtlety between revealing and being revelatory which characterises Loach's films.
Whilst having to accommodate both processes, the film feels stretched, the potency dissipating from it as it goes on too long. There are a few too many storylines, perhaps, to support the film's anti-climactic ending.
There is a final criticism which possibly reveals more about a Briton's reactions than it does about this Spanish film: it treats these men very kindly. Most are lazy and happy to scrounge of others: Reina (ably played by Enrique Villén) for their bar bills or Ana (Nieve de Medina, who is also very good) for their earnings in the case of José. Her demanding and demeaning work in a fish canning factory leaves her spraying litres of deodorant on herself. But it can't hide the stink of her husband's self-pity; one can't help but feel that the film's expectation that its viewers should sympathise with these characters stretches sympathy too far, especially non-Spanish sympathy. A similar sensation is aroused when watching Take My Eyes - the voice which said, 'Never mind understanding the pain of the man, what about the effects of his actions on others?' wasn't as loud as it would have been in a Western European film.
Nevertheless, Mondays remains a vibrant and divergent film, too long and too easy on its protagonists, but with a charm and insight that commends it.
Richard Dilks
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