Claudia Fontan Movies

Suburban ennui manifests itself in a disturbing manner in this black comedy from Spain. Berta (Silvia Marso) and Esteban (Alberto Jimenez) are a couple living in an upscale planned community with their children Oliver (Samuel Viyuela Gonzalez) and Lucia (Andrea Blasco Sierra). While on the surface Berta and Esteban seem happy and successful, in truth they're both suffering from depression, anxiety and loss of sexual appetite, and their children are becoming as neurotic as their folks. One day, a dead bird drops from the sky and lands at Berta's feet; she panics and warns the kids to stay away from the street where it happened, through Oliver sneaks out to rescue the bird's corpse. Living down the street are Hugo (Eduardo Blanco) and Monica (Claudia Fontan), who want their neighbors to think they're wealthy even though they're nearly broke, and while their friends think they've sent their daughter Greta (Ines Aldea) to an exclusive private school in America, she's actually locked up in the house and forbidden to show herself. Birds continue to turn up dead around the neighborhood, and Hugo and Esteban take it upon themselves to find out what's killing them when they aren't busy spying on a pair of teenage girls living close by. Pajaros Muertos (aka Dead Birds) was the first feature film from the sibling directing team of Guillermo Sempere and Jorge Sempere. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A family wedding brings out the best and the worst in the various parties involved in this warm but pointed comedy-drama. Rafael Belvedere (Ricardo Darin) makes his living running the restaurant ran by his father, Nino (Hector Alterio), and the combination of a stressful job and familial tensions are wearing him down to a frazzle. Rafael is divorced from his wife, Sandra (Claudia Fontan), he's all but a stranger to his daughter, Vicky (Gimena Nobile), and it's been almost a year since he last paid a visit to his mother, Norma (Norma Aleandro), who is battling Alzheimer's in a retirement home. Rafael has a girlfriend, Naty (Natalia Verbeke), but after a long day of work and dealing with his father, she finds he rarely wants to do anything but watch old reruns on television. With Norma's health declining, Nino decides that he wants to renew their wedding vows and give his wife the nice church service he couldn't afford when he was younger; however, arranging the affair turns out to be far more complicated than either Rafael or Nino imagined, and the circumstances lead to some profound changes for father, son, and the rest of the family. El Hijo de la Novia was directed by Juan Jose Campanella, who in recent years has been dividing his time between helming feature films in his native Argentina and directing episodic television in America. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi