SPANISH CINEMA - CARMINA Y AMÉN (Carmina & Amen) Spain (2014)

SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL IN AUSTRALIA 2015

The following are some notes before seeing the movie.

'Carmina y Amén' is the sequel of 'Carmina y revienta' (Carmina & Blow Up) a film that in 2012 took the Spanish cinema scene by surprise. With a very limited budget, Paco León, an actor from Seville, decided to make 'Carmina y Revienta' with his mother (Carmina Barrios) as Carmina, and his sister (Maria León) as María, Carmina's daughter. It was, clearly, a family affair; so much that they didn't even bother to change the character's names. The film, however, is far from being a biopic of the Barrios-León family; it is rather, a successful cinematographic experiment that Paco León had had in mind for quite some time. 

Carmina, the character, was a 57 in the first movie, she lived in Seville and was running a family bar with her husband. The movie starts in Carmina's kitchen. In the small hours of the night she is alone smoking a cigarette and muttering what to do. There have been a series of robberies in the family bar they run and the insurance company is not cooperating. From here onwards we become interested in her story and we wish she succeeds in solving her problem despite her methods, often far from orthodox. 

The film is not a morality tale but one of survival. Carmina Barrios, the actress, has given life to a fantastic Carmina, a woman who is a fighter in the best sense of the word; believing in fatalism, a life set of beliefs that have served so well the Mediterranean people across the ages. His son has recognised that her mother brought to the character much more than he had in mind and could see the Carmina saga expanding, not necessarily as Carmina. We will have to wait and see what he meant.

SOME BACKGROUND

It has been said of Andalusia that it is a matriarchy. May be. This is not the post to discuss this but Carmina, and she certainly is a matriarch, an Andalusian matriarch. She reminds me of another matriarch, Janine Codi, an Australian from Melbourne, that the wonderful Jacki Weaver created in 'Animal Kingdom'. These two women however are very different; Janine Codi was a sociopath, cold, cunning, calculating and manipulative; Carmina on the other hand is fatalistic, pragmatic, a 'what you see is what you get' and 'this is what there is and if you don't like it, stiff bikkies' kind of woman; but she is also wise. She listens to people's problems and only acts if the believes it is necessary.  These two women are strong and determined, and they know how to get ahead in life, even when life is not how they would like it to be.  

THE PLOT

In the first movie, in one of Carmina's monologues in her kitchen at night there is a scene where she looks directly into the camera and tells exactly what will happen in this sequel, which is the following: the sudden death of Carmina's husband. The problem is that he dies two days before his pay is due to arrive. Carmina will convince her daughter to keep her husband’s death a secret for two days, until that much needed payment arrives. 

Unfortunately for non-native speakers, the Andalusian speech is hard to understand as Andalusians speak fast and break words in half, so 'para' becomes 'pa', 'nada' becomes 'ná' and so on.  Students of Spanish should not be discouraged, this is no Salamanca Spanish, but the language is alive, rich, colourful, full of life, very much like their people.  This is the land of my father, so I know what I am talking about.