El verano que vivimos (2020)

Isabel is a journalism student who is in the journal of a Galician coastal town for her work placement. During her stay, she finds an anonymous obituary dedicated to Lucía. It tells a love, friendship and treason story in 1958.

Director:

Carlos Sedes

Writers:

Ramón Campos, Javier Chacártegui

Stars:

Blanca Suárez, Javier Rey, Pablo Molinero

3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Blanca Suárez	...	Lucía Vega
Javier Rey	...	Gonzalo
Pablo Molinero	...	Hernán
María Pedraza	...	Adela
Manuel Morón	...	Evaristo
Guiomar Puerta	...	Isabel
Carlos Cuevas	...	Carlos
Mercedes Sampietro	...	Lucía Mayor
Adelfa Calvo	...	Mercedes
Antonio Durán 'Morris'	...	Sebastián Fernet
Pedro Rudolphi	...	Curro
Carmen Muga	...	Rosario (as Carmen Muñoz)
David Villanueva	...	Miguel Cernuda
María Espejo	...	Rocío
Fael García	...	Amigo 1

Storyline

1998. Isabel is a young girl who moves Vigo, Pontevedra (Galicia, northwest to Spain) to make her practices as journalist, but her new boss Don Mauricio only orders her the section of the obituaries. Reluctant to make the job, in her first day she receives an anonymous letter about a woman named Lucía. Talking with Don Mauricio, Isabel each year in the same day since 15 years ago the newspaper receives the same obituary, but this last letter, that it was sent before the usual. Puzzled about it, Isabel gets permission of Don Mauricio to investigate, discovering that the man responsible to write the letters, Gonzalo, lives in a house close to a riff. However, when she travels to the place, she not finds Gonzalo but Carlos, Gonzalo's son, who explains her that his father passed away a few days ago. Telling him the obituaries Gonzalo wrote, Carlos accepts Isabel's offer for working together to investigate about Lucía not only because Lucía wasn't his name's mother, but the chance to know ...

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Plot Keywords:

friendship | 1990s | 1998 | year 1998 | galicia | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Did You Know?

Soundtracks

El verano que vivimos
Written and Performed by Alejandro Sanz

User Reviews

Too shiny surface layer in a poor film

The movie runs without an intelligent and measured creative work. Has a great production, great actors but imho is a continuous demonstration of lack of creative direction, just a good technical jobs becomes in a nice wrapping for a quick consumption product.

I am not an author cinema's fan. I am not a sybarite. I am not enjoy a French film from unknown actors and director in OST without subtitles.

Photography is beautiful, although colors are way generally too saturated, searching with too much effort Instagram looks all the time (or Lalaland effect in a pair of scenes). As I said, great production, locations are marvelous and show a part of Spain I don't know and I became willing to know.

The cast is very interesting, few of the quality sparks in the film proceed or are related to the actors and actresses. Blanca Suarez and Javier Rey characters share great connection moments, and some others show they are over the general creative quality of the results. Nerveless these good tools, actors direction are very poor, with over response, super drama and lack of general tone. Suarez do a great job transmitting just with her glance, but as I said, just sparks in a storm.

The script is horrible. Using flashbacks from a recent past to a further one, pretends involve the viewer but just dislocate and cuts the action every time does one time jump. Lack of sense, logic, awful and forced characters responses are common all along the movie. Time movement perception is compressed and altered in such way that makes hard to believe most of scene situations. And main events in the plot are completely mad and illogical. Just a shallow guideline review reveals big logical holes for such and intense life changing and allegedly passionate events, Plenty of clichés again and without further development of personality or characters.

Music is a good surprise in certain moments but is not connected with the action. Beautiful but without purpose or anchorage. Sometimes is too loud related to what is happening in the scene.. common to recent netflix Spanish successful productions as The cable girls.

As I said, cast, production and photography are good enough to query the director's labor. How many resources are wasted and how many restraints wre involved are not in my sight to evaluate, but I can talk about the results. No way these talk good about his work. Photography, montage, script, actors direction... Shots and framing maybe are good individually but globally seems a videoclip or a showreel for the directors capability, not related to a global sense for the movie. It just hurts to write, I am not an angry hater, just feeling the opposite, a light sadness and deception due to there are enough beautiful things to do a great movie and the results are too far of that.

Details

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Release Date:

4 December 2020 (Spain)

Filming Locations:

Cadiz, Spain

Company Credits

Production Co:

4 Cats Pictures, Atresmedia Cine, Bambú Producciones

Technical Specs

Runtime:

119 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1