Carmen Elias Movies

A sullen doctor who is teetering on the cusp of middle-age is forced to revisit his painful family past in director Gerardo Herrero's adaptation of Almudena Grandes' best-selling novel. As children, Juan and Charo (Natalia Sanchez) were sweethearts until Charo was swept away by the charms of Juan's older brother Dami. Though Dami and Charo eventually marry, their union was simply not meant to be. Soon after the unhappy wife comes seeking solace in the arms of her husband's brother, tragedy strikes and Charo is killed in a deadly car accident. Years later, Juan is a forty-year old doctor who has relocated his family from Madrid to the village of Cádiz on Spain's Atlantic coast. In addition to caring for he and Dami's mentally handicapped younger brother Alfonso (Andres Gertrudix), Juan also acts as guardian to his young niece Tamara. When a relationship begins to develop between Juan and his Andalusian maid Maribel (Cuca Escribano), Juan's troubled past soon begins to work its way to the surface of things despite his best efforts to keep it under lock and key. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Noted Spanish director Ventura Pons closes his "minimalist trilogy" with this morbid meditation on the frailty of life, told in seven vignettes depicting the final moments of seven very different people. A filmmaker (Lluis Homar) overcomes his writer's block just as he has a heart attack, a junkie (Marc Martinez) is confronted by his concerned sister (Anna Azcona) and later overdoses, a young girl (Carlota Bantula) chokes to death on a chicken bone in front of her horrified mother, a hospital patient (Mingo Rafols) can't reach the panic button during a fatal coughing fit, a youth on a motorbike is knocked over by a pair of cops, and finally, a deeply religious middle-aged businessman (Francesc Orella) is executed by a hitman. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Peruvian director Francisco J. Lomvbardi made this Spanish-Peruvian drama adapted from Jaime Bayly's novel about life in Lima as seen by an upper-class homosexual youth. Sensitive Joaquin, caught between his overprotective, religious mother (Carmen Elias) and his macho father (Hernan Romero), leaves home to study law. A romance ripens between Joaquin and college student Alejandra (Lucia Jimenez). Her friend Rocio (Lita Baluarte) is scheduled to marry secretly gay Gonzalo (Christian Meier). Joaquin begins a series of trysts with Gonzalo, eventually leaving Alejandra, dropping out of law school, and turning to drugs and sex with wealthy Alfonso (Giovanni Ciccia) before departing for Miami. Shown at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

In this Spanish art-film, which won a prize at the Valladolid Film Festival in 1996, is most notable for its daring cinematography and atmosphere than its actual narrative. The last of a succession of housekeepers who have gone mad working for a reclusive author (Fernando Guillen), Lola (Carmen Elias) tentatively investigates her employer and gradually becomes close to him. The author's old girlfriend (Andrea Ferreol) appears on the scene and Lola finds herself in competition with her. The author reveals that he is an identical twin, and that some time before this, he and his twin exchanged lives. One highlight of the film is its repeated and imaginative use of the image of a turtle. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this Spanish-French drama, a Turkish diplomat in Soviet Georgia during 1932 attempts to solve the mysterious death of his predecessor. It is based on the book by Belgian author Georges Simenon. Adil Bey has just been assigned to replace the recently deceased consul at Batum, a town on the Black Sea. From his office he can peer into the apartment of a security policeman. Living with him are his wife and pretty sister Sonia who was both secretary and mistress of the previous Turkish consul. Soon Adil finds himself wanting Sonia. Later he begins to fear that he is being slowly poisoned, much in the same way, that the other consul might have died. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

At the beginning of this experimental Catalan film, the camera is at the (fictional) post-award reception for a book entitled Warsaw Bridge. After following one group of cocktail-consuming literary hounds after another for quite some time, the film officially "opens" with its credits. Thereafter, scenes which may or may not have something to do with the book appear. All of them are portentious and symbolic in some fashion, none of them connect to any sort of sustained storyline. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Leopoldo Contreras (Fernando Fernán Gómez) is a burnt-out university professor who convinces a married couple to take him on as a live-in servant, in exchange for room and board. The absurdity of this supposedly serious proposition only worsens when the "servant" discovers he has $200,000 in royalties due from his books, and so his situation will somehow have to change. With these premises for starters, anything can happen next. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Catalan director Antoni Ribas spent three years creating an epic in three parts, about three days in June, 1917 - a triple play that is successful in this first segment, handling the many factions active and bubbling over in Spain in 1917. The monarchy of Alfonso XIII was weakening so rapidly that he would leave the country permanently in 1931, Catalan nationalists were demanding independence for Catalonia, labor initiatives were in sympathy with the principles that stoked the Russian revolution, anarchists were shouting to be heard, and the military was not exactly a united front. The two leads in this story of an unstable nation in turmoil are a dedicated labor leader and a reserved army lieutenant. Action on all social levels - from the opera to the ghetto - keeps the drama moving at an interesting and fast pace. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi