Qui t'estima, Babel? (1987)

Director:

Ignasi P. Ferré

Release Date:

27 January 1988 (Spain)

Cast

Mercedes Sampietro
Assumpta Serna
Mila Fernández	...	Vecina
Judit-Rosa Vidal
Amparo Moreno
May Vives
Ferran Rañé
Carmen Molina
Rosana Pastor
Blanca Martínez
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Paul Berrondo

Also Known As:

¿Quién te quiere, Babel? (Spain: Castilian title)

Runtime:

Spain:92 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Catalan

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

Let's pretend Babel doesn't exist.

This educative type of movie exposes a tricky subject: the impact on a child of her mother's mental illness. The plot focuses on two aspects: the defensive mechanisms used by an unloved girl -Babel- to have a glimpse of sanity and the 'see no evil, hear no evil' attitude of adults including relatives, school teachers and psychiatrists. Their failed attempts to tackle tragedy give us an idea of how naive is society at times. The mother is mad, the daughter is not, period.

Technically the movie is unimpressive, the same goes for the acting, but nonetheless it is effective enough to interest the viewer. But sadly, the 'based upon a true story' effectiveness is somewhat lost when the director sets the action in Barcelona, a Barcelona no one in Catalonia would recognize as real because the lack of Spanish speaking voices through-out the movie. Back then in 1987, Barcelona was still mostly labeled in 'Spanish', shopping malls and institutions were reluctant to give a chance to Catalan speakers. Even today Catalan is used in one out of 6 TV channels and on one out of 100 movie theaters so is unthinkable a monolingual scenario as seen in that movie. Thankfully, this anomaly has been overgrown with time and local movies and even foreign ones like "L'Auberge Espagnole" reflect a more likely scenario of our bilingual society matching more appropriately the Babel in the movie's tittle.