Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Film Review: Rudo y Cursi (2008)

Following on from the theme of having no theme, my next post is a film review. I suppose it's important to note that I love movies; watching them, making them, discussing them....you get the idea. As such, I've been looking forwards to writing a review for a while but have been waiting for a really good film to get the ball rolling (the last film I saw before 'Rudo y Cursi' was 'Transformers 2'....don't even get me started on where that one went wrong).

First off, if you've seen 'Y Tu Mamá También' you'll be familiar with the cast (Diego Luna from 'Milk' and Gael García Bernal from 'The Motorcycle Diaries') and it really has to be said, these two are brilliant opposite each other. Here they play brothers from a random small village in Mexico. Turns out they're both amazing at football and both end up playing professionally...on different teams. The lads are totally convincing as brothers who have their fair share of luggage and manage to bring the audience to laughter, joy, anger and even despair without missing a beat.

The direction was a bit obvious but still without flaw. Carlos Cuarón follows in the footsteps of his big brother Alfonso ('Y Tu Mamá También', 'Children of Men'). His solid choice of shots can be equated to a comedian delivering the punch line and just the right time: it makes a decent scene into a great one. I won't get to technical into all the nitty gritty of good directing but suffices to say that, as his first directorial outing 'Rudo y Cursi', while not a masterpiece, certainly makes me want to watch out for his next film.

It would be wrong to say that there aren't some major flaws with the film though. It changes in tone very drastically from comedy to drama to comedy to drama etc. Possibly just a problem that we could attribute to the directors lack of actual experience, but a problem none the less. Does it ruin the movie? Absolutely not, but something that Cuarón will have to watch out for in future. As a Spanish speaker, the dialogue makes a lot of sense to me, and as I've often seen with subtitles, I'm sure a lot of the subtleties and local sayings get lost in translation.

Worth a watch for football fans and avid cinema goers alike.

**** Four out of Five.

Manuel

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