A middle-class family encounters a beautiful stranger and the ugly realities of modern-day Europe when they visit the seashore in "Bwana", Spain's official submission for the Academy Awards that showed recently in the American Cinematheque's "Recent Spanish Cinema" series. The film shared the top prize at last year's San Sebastian Film Festival.
Not as intense but equally as nihilistic as director Imanol Uribe's award-winning "Dias Contados", "Bwana" plays like a commercial comedy for long stretches, with the squabbling family finding an illegal African refugee who knows only one Spanish phrase.
Andres Pajares plays the easily flustered taxi-driver father with an engaging mixture of macho bluster and passiveness typical of a scared city dweller. Maria Barranco as the mother, Dori, is a prejudiced European at first terrified by the appearance of Ombasi (Emilio Buale).
Seen burying and mourning a comrade who presumably died in transit from Africa, the young and healthy Ombasi is not half as threatening as other white characters encountered early on. But the family, including a young daughter and rebellious son, are both cruel and uncaring in their early encounters with the lost black man.
A spark plug left on the beach keeps the family overnight, and as darkness descends, they seek shelter by Ombasi's fire. Dori has a dream about Ombasi and is so sexually excited she makes love with her husband with wild abandon.
Ombasi comes to the father's rescue when he stumbles on smugglers, but the bonds forged are fragile. When a trio of merciless skinheads catches Ombasi and the mother bathing in the ocean, a final ugly confrontation underscores the family's (and mainstream Western Europe's) precarious position in a volatile world.
The film goes out of its way to canonize Ombasi and denigrate the xenophobic, cowardly leads, whose actions result in a disastrously unsatisfying climax. As in "Dias Contados", Uribe paints a bleak picture of modern Spain that in "Bwana" is awkwardly attached to a cross-cultural comedy concept that seems woefully dated.
Evocatively shot on location by Javier Aquirresarobe, the film's lighter middle section works best. Buale's character is by far the most interesting, and the film suffers much when the focus is on the stereotyped family members.
BWANA
Aurum/Cartel/Origen
Antena 3 Television, Canal Plus Espana
Director Imanol Uribe
Executive producer Antonio Cardenal
Writers Imanol Uribe, Juan Potali, Paco Pino
Production manager Antonio Guillen Rey
Director of photography Javier Aquirresarobe
Art director Felix Murcia
Editor Teresa Font
Color/stereo
Cast:
Antonio Andres Pajares
Dori Maria Barranco
Ombasi Emilio Buale
Running time -- 87 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Not as intense but equally as nihilistic as director Imanol Uribe's award-winning "Dias Contados", "Bwana" plays like a commercial comedy for long stretches, with the squabbling family finding an illegal African refugee who knows only one Spanish phrase.
Andres Pajares plays the easily flustered taxi-driver father with an engaging mixture of macho bluster and passiveness typical of a scared city dweller. Maria Barranco as the mother, Dori, is a prejudiced European at first terrified by the appearance of Ombasi (Emilio Buale).
Seen burying and mourning a comrade who presumably died in transit from Africa, the young and healthy Ombasi is not half as threatening as other white characters encountered early on. But the family, including a young daughter and rebellious son, are both cruel and uncaring in their early encounters with the lost black man.
A spark plug left on the beach keeps the family overnight, and as darkness descends, they seek shelter by Ombasi's fire. Dori has a dream about Ombasi and is so sexually excited she makes love with her husband with wild abandon.
Ombasi comes to the father's rescue when he stumbles on smugglers, but the bonds forged are fragile. When a trio of merciless skinheads catches Ombasi and the mother bathing in the ocean, a final ugly confrontation underscores the family's (and mainstream Western Europe's) precarious position in a volatile world.
The film goes out of its way to canonize Ombasi and denigrate the xenophobic, cowardly leads, whose actions result in a disastrously unsatisfying climax. As in "Dias Contados", Uribe paints a bleak picture of modern Spain that in "Bwana" is awkwardly attached to a cross-cultural comedy concept that seems woefully dated.
Evocatively shot on location by Javier Aquirresarobe, the film's lighter middle section works best. Buale's character is by far the most interesting, and the film suffers much when the focus is on the stereotyped family members.
BWANA
Aurum/Cartel/Origen
Antena 3 Television, Canal Plus Espana
Director Imanol Uribe
Executive producer Antonio Cardenal
Writers Imanol Uribe, Juan Potali, Paco Pino
Production manager Antonio Guillen Rey
Director of photography Javier Aquirresarobe
Art director Felix Murcia
Editor Teresa Font
Color/stereo
Cast:
Antonio Andres Pajares
Dori Maria Barranco
Ombasi Emilio Buale
Running time -- 87 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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