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Film: Agnosia
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 30th May 2011
Distributor: Momentum
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Eugenio Mira
Starring: Martina Gedeck, Eduardo Noriega, Bárbara Goenaga, Félix Gómez, Jack Taylor
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Spain
Language: Spanish
Review by: Daryl Wing
From the producers of two of the greatest scare-fests of recent years, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Orphanage (2007), written by Antonio Trashorras, who also co-penned Guillermo del Toro’s spectacularly spooky The Devil’s Backbone (2001), and directed by Eugenio Mira, who brought us darkly comic The Birthday (2004), comes Agnosia, a Spanish period drama about love and, er, deceit? There must be some mistake, surely?
Joana (Bárbara Goenaga), a young woman suffering from the rare neuropsychological condition agnosia, which affects her sensual awareness, is preparing for her wedding to her father’s business associate, Carles (Eduardo Noriega).
Although Joana's eyes and ears function perfectly, her brain cannot interpret the stimuli she receives through them. When her father dies leaving behind a secret that only Joana knows, the formula to a telescopic lens hidden in her subconscious, she falls victim to a sinister plan to take advantage of her condition.
While her enemies try to extract the secret against her will, a handsome young man called Vincent (Felix Gomez), who previously worked for her father and shares an uncanny resemblance to Carles, is blackmailed into helping them, but his feelings toward Joana prove that perception isn’t always reality…
Eugenio Mira’s movie is wrought with persuasive period detail, lush landscapes, strong performances from an outstanding cast, but most surprising of all, razor-edged savagery and bursts of brutal imagery that make Agnosia almost as chilling as any of the movies already mentioned. It’s a genuinely refreshing surprise, even after the opening stampede when a horse is executed because they ran out of balloons. The plot veers into fantastical territory throughout, but Mira keeps it in check by allowing the characters to be as real as possible.
The opening act is quite bizarre, but all the better for it. Beginning many years earlier, when Joana is a child, the audience is able to revel in the film’s opulent surroundings reminiscent to countless fairytales as a group of wealthy gentlemen test out a new telescopic lens, shooting at balloons released by the whippersnapper. But then the horse gets one in the neck, a child collapses, the beginning of her suffering, and we are catapulted into a bleak, shadowy world controlled by villains and thugs. In turn, we are introduced to Vincent, ambushed and outnumbered, innocent yet insurgent, and the one man who can make Joana’s universe worth seeing again.
At its best, Agnosia is cruel and hard-hearted, with only Joana and her father decent enough to route for. The rest of the cast provide constant wickedness, whether it be Noriega’s reasonable turn as Carles, with his countless trips to the whorehouse because his future spouse isn’t giving him any (and he’s too polite to ask), or the mad doctor using his respectability to make lots of money, down to the evil business partner that never leaves loose ends, and even Vincent, a nice guy who doesn’t care if the girl he wants to ‘smash’ is getting married.
Because of this, there is bloodshed throughout. Not of the Sunday afternoon, Sikes murders Nancy variety, kindly gruesome even if it’s one of the most graphic, frightening scenes Dickens ever wrote, but seriously violent, and truly unexpected, whether it’s the death of a stallion, a servant - many servants - or the shy, unassuming Joana herself. A neat twist may propel us into act two, but the thrills witnessed here are not from the love triangle that slowly develops (although Joana’s conversation with Carles after spending a thunderous night with Vincent is comically tragic), but from the more believable world of corruption it’s set in.
Sadly, although it makes for convenient plot lubricant, the biggest stumbling block is the notion that Joana is unable to distinguish Carles from Vincent. And let’s face it, without this believability, the film is going to fail, no matter what else happens. It’s certainly difficult trying to suspend disbelief. With her impaired vision, his looks (although more youthful) are convincing, yet his voice, and the hope we can believe in a relationship that suggests they have barely touched each other since childhood, doesn’t quite wash. It’s a shame, because although both Vincent and Carles are likeable, there really should only be one winner.
Let’s face it, though, shoving a girl in a cocoon for three days and kidnapping her to retrieve the secret formula is a hard sell by anyone’s standards, as is the revelation during a pleasant period drama that it’s actually hidden in Joana’s subconscious, while the love story, despite its over-egged conclusion, is well executed and refreshingly realistic. Having witnessed the beauty that is Bárbara Goenaga, you would be lying if you didn’t understand either man’s plight. And so, with a barely noticeable soundtrack, which isn’t a bad thing, other than its clumsy hindrance to Vincent’s escape attempt, Agnosia fails to catch fire. To paraphrase Joana’s disappointment, “Last night, Agnosia, you seemed like someone else.”
As impressive as it looks, along with its surprising acts of brutality, Agnosia fails to convince because it can’t combine fairytale sweetness and quirky invention with realism where it really counts – a flawed but promising addition to Spanish cinema. DW
Film: Timecrimes
Release date: 4th May 2009
Certificate: 15
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo, Juan Inciarte
Genre: Sci-Fi/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Spain
The concept of fate, of how much it controls us and how much we are its masters, is a familiar one to both filmmakers and viewers. You could be excused for thinking that there is no new way to explore the idea in a time travel story, the dangers of interfering with your past or even past-selves having been done to death. Hasn’t Marty McFly shown us all we need to know?
Héctor and Clara, a happily married middle-aged couple, have just moved into a new home. It’s the weekend and Hector is enjoying a quiet day, when all of a sudden, looking through some binoculars, he spots a naked girl in the woods bordering his property. Going to investigate, Héctor is attacked and stabbed in the arm by a man whose head is swathed in pink bandages. Running for his life, he breaks into a nearby business and makes contact with El Joven, an employee working late somewhere in the grounds.
With darkness falling, Héctor is lured to a laboratory by the scientist Joven and is persuaded to hide from the bandaged man in a machine, which Joven promptly closes and activates. One brief moment later, the machine is opened; it is day once more and Joven no longer recognizes him. Peering through his binoculars at his house next door, Héctor sees himself as he was the hour previous, spying on a naked girl at the bottom of his garden. After quickly being brought up to speed by Joven – that he has, in fact, travelled one hour back in time – Héctor (now referring to himself as Héctor 2) promises not to interfere with his earlier self and leaves, not yet realising that he is inextricably linked to the events about to unfold for Héctor 1…
It was the scene at the very end of another, perhaps slightly more famous time travel movie that really caught the imagination of many teenagers. Marty McFly, our boy hero from Back To The Future, watches himself as he escapes Libyan terrorists and disappears back in time, a scene from the beginning of the film. The concept of watching oneself from an earlier time offers plenty of scope, and by having a similar scene present very early on in Timecrimes, director Vigalondo manipulates established, longstanding celluloid DNA for a new, discerning audience.
He must have used a flowchart. It’s the only way (Nacho) Vigalondo could have kept track of the multiple storylines and timelines involved in his clever screenplay. Our hero, Héctor, a balding, portly, middle-aged everyman played wonderfully by Karra Elejalde, is soon one of multiple incarnations of himself. We start and stay with Héctor 1, glimpsing and hearing the other Héctors as he does. The smart, different and therefore refreshing change with this time traveller is that he is almost at once aware of what has happened. Not only that, as soon as he realises he is part of the very events he has experienced, he simply accepts the situation and gets on with making sure he repeats the actions he has already witnessed. Whilst this may seem clunky on paper, it is in fact a very smart move by Vigalondo. Acres of dialogue of heavy exposition and characters asking the usual sort of “What if…?” questions are abandoned, and instead our protagonist is imbibed with the same knowledge and intelligence we the audience are already privy to. And by staying with our Héctor the whole time, we are thankfully spared the tedium of watching the same scene over and over but merely filmed from a different angle, a ruse this genre usually throws up. Indeed, just as this cliché would seem to be inevitable, a new factor is thrown into the mix, forcing Héctor to tap into ever darker sides of his character and to make some serious, life altering decisions. After all, time travel never has been easy.
If all this is making Timecrimes sound complicated and hard going, it really isn’t. In fact, up until almost the final act, it’s a total breeze to follow, never demanding you make a mental map of where Héctor has been, what he’s done, or which Héctor you’re actually watching. Vigalondo’s background in shorts is, perhaps, the very reason it plays so well, for you could view the entire 90 minutes as a series of shorts, each dealing with the same story from a different point along its timeline. Héctor himself can be almost viewed as several different aspects of the same character for with each new decision he takes he becomes harder, colder and ever more ruthless. It barely takes any time at all before he casually decides to kill one of his doppelgängers in an attempt to get his life back, a far cry from the everyday, carefree husband we meet at the beginning,.
A sequel has been rumoured and the inevitable Hollywood remake is due in 2012 with Tom Cruise in the Héctor role, about as far a cry from the affable man portrayed by Elejalde as possible. One can only imagine how (badly) it will have to be rewritten to accommodate him.
Great Scott! A decidedly non-heavy, breezy, intelligent time travel caper that reinvents a tired sub-genre with style, panache and humour. JMB
Film: Timecrimes
Release date: 4th May 2009
Certificate: 15
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo, Juan Inciarte
Genre: Sci-Fi/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Spain
Shorts writer/director Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes tackles the theme of time travel in an ambitious debut feature that's part sci-fi, part horror and part noir.
While he and his wife move into their new country house, Hector notices a girl standing naked in the distance. He ventures to investigate but, after finding himself attacked by a man whose face is obscured by bandages, Hector is left running for his life.
Evading the man, Hector takes refuge in a mysterious silo where he is prompted to enter a machine which sends him backwards through time, and links him more intrinsically to the trouble he was try to escape...
The economy with which Vigalondo tells (and retells) his story of a man stuck in a seemingly never-ending time loop is such that it comes of little surprise that he is a writer/director well-versed in the plotting and execution of short films. Timecrimes is nothing if not concise, allowing for the story to zip along, greased by a careful but witty implementation of consistent key images deftly linking together each rehashing of the story, rather than lengthy expositional dialogue - something which, it could be argued, impedes its fellow small-budgeted, time travel-themed contemporary Primer.
Unlike Primer, Timecrimes never sets out to be a deep, theoretical exploration of the connotations of time interloping. But while it does not explore the implications of this quite so deeply in the scientific sense, the film is anything but dim-witted, and does an outstanding job of harnessing the theme of time travel to venture into the exploration of its effects on the protagonist's emotional - as opposed to intellectual - stability.
Vigalondo (also appearing in the film) handles Hector's journey(s) through time with a deliberate sensitivity towards the character's helplessly altering mindset - at first meek and a little too curious for his own good but, by the end, confident in his ability to control the future and those involved (or not) in it. The more detached from the immediate reality Hector allows himself to become, the more chillingly manipulative he grows, conducting his own path through the recreation of events, as well as those of the people he meets along the way, and eventually devolving into an ugly, brutish predator as he does all he can to return to his old life. Karra Elejalde portrays this transformation with a beleaguered fragility, allowing the journeys through time to bend Hector's mind and send askew the morality his initial attempts to help the stranded girl suggests he was once quite in touch with.
In Timecrimes, we are witness to a cinematic rarity: a film which, despite being based around a sole protagonist, is distinctly portmanteau in nature. Although the lead character is played by the same actor, there is no doubting that every time Hector emerges from the time machine in which he initially hides to avoid the bandaged man, he returns a different person, with a different motivation and involved in a very different take on the same story. Almost multiple short films in one, Vigalondo's ingenious application of fingerprints and signs from the future left for Hector's discovery not only serve to link together the stories but also nourish Hector's appreciation of the situation and that of the viewer, who is at all times kept in pace with the protagonist. Never are you allowed to be slack in your following of events, but neither are you granted a chance to foresee any more than Hector himself, who, with his desperate determination, and at times dizzyingly self-referential behaviour, keeps himself in the driving seat - something consistent throughout his multiple incarnations.
Multiple prophecies self-fulfilling, the series of events engineered by the man desperate to re-establish himself within his own life are on occasion bogglingly abstract, with Hector, at times, not completely knowing why he is performing a certain task, but trusting in the necessity of repeating it in the way exactly as it happened in the past in order to sustain his original reality's equilibrium. The logic is bizarre but never illogical within the realm of the movie, which maintains a straightforward complexity: Hector does what he does because it happened, and it happens because he did it. With this mentality, Vigalondo has on his hands a film which shows rather than tells, playful in its exploration of time travel but never straying from the rules of storytelling it sets itself - even as Hector has to break his own, leading to a tantalising climax. An ending made all the more breathtaking by the fact that the viewer has had the chance to develop for themselves a foresight in tune with that of Hector, whose transformation from mild-mannered husband to swollen-faced, almost indifferent puppet-master reaches a sickening conclusion.
A lovingly-crafted film, Timecrimes is not the most ambitious of time travel-themed movies, but within its formula exists a witty, devious romp, which succeeds in being more emotionally than intellectually involving. A delightfully satisfying debut showing from Vigalondo. DWS
