Al sur de Granada (2003)

Director:

Fernando Colomo

Writers:

Gerald Brenan (book)
Fernando Colomo (writer)

Release Date:

10 January 2003 (Spain)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Joven inglés busca, para escribir, pueblecito tranquilo

Plot:

In 1919, demobbed, Gerald Brenan rents a house for a year in Yegan, a village in Alpujarra. He has little but a love of reading and writing...

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | 1920s | Writer | Spain | Andalusia

Awards:

1 win & 11 nominations

Cast

Matthew Goode	...	Gerald Brenan
Verónica Sánchez	...	Juliana
Guillermo Toledo	...	Paco
Consuelo Trujillo	...	María
Ángela Molina	...	Doña Felicidad
Antonio Resines	...	Don Virgilio
Laurence Fox	...	Ralph Partridge
Bebe	...	Ángeles (as Bebe Rebolledo)
Jessica Kate Meyer	...	Dora Carrington
James Fleet	...	Lytton Strachey
María Alfonsa Rosso	...	Doña Clara
Sebastián Haro	...	Don Gabriel 'Culonegro'
Mariana Cordero	...	Máxima
Juan Margallo	...	Emiliano
Sandra Wahlbeck	...	Gamel Woolsey

Also Known As:

South from Granada (International: English title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish | English | Latin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Spain:7

Company:

Antena 3 Televisión

Not great, but charming and entertaining

This is a beautiful looking movie, wonderfully photographed. It isn't a great film by any means, but it is charming and entertaining, presenting a topical view of life in the southern villages of Spain at the time. The characters are not fully fleshed people, they are stereotypes attempting to represent the different hues of the Spanish psyche... if you look hard enough, you can even find references to the Quixote/Sancho relationship which is so characteristic of the Spanish culture. There are some disappointments too: social issues such as the great divide between rich and poor, the consequences of the religious protestant reform failure in Spain, and the emigration dream (in this case to Argentine) are just touched but never fully explored. Fernando Colomo is an A-list director of the Spanish film industry and he has attracted a star studded cast to this movie. Great names like Antonio Resines and Angela Molina are happy to take on what they are really minor roles... The acting in general is quite good. Ultimatelly this ends up being a 'fish out of water' film which appears to have had pretensions of becoming a quality/art cinema when first conceived, but never quite achieved it.