Leonor Watling Movies

Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar takes a look at his own adolescence as well as confronting the issue of sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church in this stylish drama, which was chosen to open the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is a Spanish filmmaker who is having trouble settling on a new project when he's approached by Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael García Bernal), who was his close friend when they were schoolboys. Goded, who fell in love for the first time with Rodriguez, barely recognizes the man as his former crush, but agrees to read the short story he's written. The tale turns out to be an semi-autobiographical account of their days in a Catholic boarding school, in which a cross-dressing night-club performer named Zahara (also played by Bernal) hooks up with a man named Enrique (Alberto Ferreiro), who turns out to have been his first lover when he was a student. Recalling their school days, Zahara tracks down Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho), one of his teachers from school with pedophilic tendencies, and threatens to expose the priest's attempts to seduce him and ruin his relationship with Enrique years ago. Goded decides to use the story as the basis for his next film, and Rodriguez, an out-of-work actor, makes it clear he's eager to play Zahara. However, Goded isn't certain if Rodriguez is the right actor for the role, or if he's even the man he claims to be; an angry conflict with Rodriguez leads Goded back to the real Ignacio's mother (Petra Martínez). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A man with a secret forms an uneasy alliance with an opportunistic reporter in this drama from Mexico. Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) is a broadcast journalist for a Latin-American tabloid television series who has been sent to Ecuador to cover the funeral services of three children who fell victim to a mass murderer known as "the Monster of Babahoyo." Shortly after Bonilla finishes interviewing a young mourner, the child is struck by a car driven by Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar), a traveling salesman who pedals bibles. The crowd assembled to pay their respects flies into a rage, pulling Cepeda from his car and nearly killing him. Bonilla's intervention ends up saving Cepeda's life, but the reporter is ashamed to admit that he and his cameraman didn't break through the crowd to save the driver, but in hopes of getting a better shot of those beating him. Cepeda is jailed for manslaughter, and when Bonilla visits him behind bars, he shares some unexpected news with the reporter -- he claims to know the identity of "the Monster of Babahoyo," and also knows where the killer has buried other victims. Cepeda is willing to share this information if Bonilla can help get him out of jail, but instead of handing the information to the police, Bonilla decides to investigate himself, certain that another scoop on the case will boost his ratings and his career. Crónicas was screened as part of the "Un Certain Regard" series at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When the troubled son of an NGO worker refuses to take a test and announces that he is not leaving his room, his concerned mother asks one of her clients, a Cuban exile, for help in setting the boy straight. Gonzalo has decided to drop out of school, and his mother Ana isn't sure how to convince the boy that he's making a crucial mistake. Ana's client Carlos is a Cuban exile who makes his living selling cigars and artwork on the black market. When Carlos learns of Ana's dilemma, he calls on recently released convict Mikel to teach the boy how to play chess. Perhaps is young Gonzalo can master the game, he can learn to start living again. As the lessons get underway, each of these characters learns that in order to truly move on with their lives they much first break free of the bonds that prevent them from being who they really are. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A good woman falls for a bad man and is at once unwilling and unable to break free in this intense drama. Rosa (Isabel Ampudia) is an attractive and sensible woman who waits tables at a coffee shop; she's engaged to be married, and she and her fiancé are saving their money with an eye toward buying a market. One day, Rosa meets a handsome man named Ivan (Alberto Jimenez), and all her plans go out the window; Rosa is immediately attracted to him, and once she's gone to bed with him, she leaves her fiancé behind without looking back. Rosa and Ivan go into business together running a bar, but she soon discovers that beneath his glossy surface, Ivan is a louse -- he's unfaithful, throws their money away, sells drugs on the side, and gambles compulsively. But Rosa is as addicted to Ivan as he is to games of chance, and no matter what he does, she's willing to pay his bills and take him back, becoming more deeply obsessed the more he hurts her. In time, Ivan has run up debts so high that Rosa opens a brothel to pay off the bills; in the process, Rosa becomes a shrewd business woman and independently wealthy, but she still can't bring herself to walk away from Ivan. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two men separated by a hundred years share a similar and provocative point of view in this offbeat drama. Mondrian Killroy (John Hurt) is an iconoclastic college professor who has earned a remarkable reputation for his lectures in which he presents scathing re-evaluations of important and acclaimed works of art. Martha (Leonor Watling) is a former student of Killroy who is a passionate admirer of his work, and is involved in a project to recreate on of his most controversial talks -- "Lecture 21," in which Killroy defends in detail his opinion that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is an old-fashioned piece of claptrap that has not withstood the test of time. Meanwhile, in the 1800's, Hans Peters (Noah Taylor) is a respected musician who is led by fate to Hoffmeister (Clive Russell), a scholar who asks Peters to help him and his compatriots prove their similar contention that Beethoven's final symphony is not the masterwork it's often said to be. Moving back and forth between the 19th and 20th Centuries, Killroy and Hoffmeister offer their own theories about the strengths and weaknesses of one of the world's most celebrated composers, and a number of their friends and acquaintances, some knowledgeable and some wildly eccentric, present their thoughts about the artist and his art. Lezione 21 (aka Lecture 21) was the first directorial project from acclaimed novelist Alessandro Baricco. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The debut film from the filmmaking team of Daniela Fejerman and Inés París, A Mi Madre le Gustan las Mujeres is a racy comedy starring Rosa María Sardà as Sofía. Divorced for years, Sofía gathers her three daughters, Sol (Silvia Abascal), Gimena (María Pujalte), and Elvira (Leonor Watling), together to celebrate her birthday and to make an announcement. It seems Elvira has fallen in love, which excites the girls until she reveals that it is a woman that she's been seeing. The title, A Mi Madre le Gustan las Mujeres, is Spanish for My Mother Likes Women. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Director Manuel Huerga teams with screenwriter Lluis Arcarazo to explore the life and death of the last man executed by the garrote in this biopic following the life of leftist Spanish bank robber and revolutionary Salvador Puig. The product of a leftist bourgeois household, Salvador (Daniel Bruehl) railed against Franco's oppressive as a young student, and soon turned to bank robbery as a means of contributing to the radical labor movement. When a cop is killed during one of the robberies and Salvador is captured, the trial to determine the young activist's fate is swift. Though Salvador does put some hope into the chance for a reprieve, his grim fate is ultimately sealed when a bomb kills Franco's president. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Pedro Almodóvar follows his international success All About My Mother with an offbeat drama that explores the friendship of two men brought together under unusual but strangely similar circumstances. Benigno (Javier Camára) is a male nurse whose apartment overlooks a dance studio run by Katerina (Geraldine Chaplin); he often sits on his balcony and watches one of Katerina's students, Alicia (Leonor Watling), and he finds himself becoming infatuated with her. When Alicia is severely injured in an auto accident that leaves her in a coma, Benigno discovers she has been admitted to the hospital where he works, and he spends his days caring for a woman he now deeply loves but has barely met. Marco (Darío Grandinetti) is a journalist who was assigned to interview Lydia (Rosario Flores), a well-known female bullfighter whose on-the-rocks romance with another toreador, "El Niño de Valencia" (Adolfo Fernández), has made her the focus of the tabloid press. During Marco's interview with Lydia, he goes out of his way to treat her kindly, and she appears to return his attention. During the bullfight which follows, Lydia is gored by the bull, and is now in a coma; Marco is certain his interview broke her steely concentration, and he spends most of his days at the hospital, convinced her injuries are his fault. Alicia and Lydia are both housed in the same ward of the same hospital, and in time Benigno and Marco become close friends, bonding in their shared devotion to women who cannot return their affection. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Originally filmed as part of the Six Films to Keep You Awake horror series from Spain, Alex de la Iglesia's The Baby's Room weaves the unsettling story of a young couple who moves into a renovated home with their newborn child, only to discover that sinister forces are at work around them when the baby monitor begins to malfunction in a most unsettling manner. Juan and Sonia have found the perfect home to start a family in, or at least that's what they thought when they first moved in. Everyone is content in their new surroundings until, after tucking into bed after an exhausting day, Juan begins to hear strange noises coming though the baby monitor. Upon checking the child to find that nothing is amiss, Juan assumes that he was just hearing things. When the noises persist, however, the couple makes the decision to replace the audio-only monitor with a new version that also features a video camera. Unfortunately things go from bad to worse when Juan wakes up in the middle of the night to see a complete stranger standing over his sleeping child. Racing into his child's room, Juan is relieved to find that, once again, his imagination seems to have gotten the best of him. Still, the concerned father can't shake the feeling that something supernatural is happening in his beautiful new home, and after falling into a frightening spiral of paranoia he enlists the aid of a paranormal investigator to find out what's really going on. But the truth, as Juan will soon find out, is so shocking that it will test the very limits of his sanity. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Writer-director Isabel Coixet's (My Life Without Me) beautifully wrought chamber drama The Secret Life of Words opens on Hanna (Sarah Polley), a laconic, backward and introverted girl in her early '30s, quietly drowning in her own isolation. Partially deaf from working an untold number of hours in a loud factory, Hanna must wear a hearing aid. When her supervisors -- deeply concerned about the four years that have lapsed in Hanna's life without a break -- force her to go on holiday for a month, she hesitantly takes off for a coastal village in the north of Ireland. Once there, she decides to dine in a local restaurant, and overhears, by chance, a telephone conversation conducted by Victor (Eddie Marsan), regarding an accident on a nearby oil rig that he precipitated, which left a victim, Josef (Tim Robbins) in its wake. Hanna tells Victor that she is a nurse, and is instantly flown to the rig to treat the bedbound Josef -- temporarily blind from extensive cornea damage, and his body blanketed with severe burns. She also encounters the structure's motley and eccentric band of workers -- from ecologist Martin (Daniel Mays), who spends his time studying mutated mussels that collect on the ship's base and the waves that strike the side of the rig, to Josef, to chef Simon (Javier Camára), who prepares "gourmet" food no one else can stand, to Dimitri (Sverre Anker Ousdal), an elderly gentleman who is as much of a loner as Hanna. As Hanna begins to foresee a new place for herself among these individuals, a relationship gradually develops between Hanna and Josef, who holds his new friend rapt with lyrical, evocative, magisterial tales from his past -- unknowingly drawing Hanna, one step at a time, toward inner joy, self-expression, and revelation of her own sad and complex story. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

An expectant, ultra-modern mother living in 1913 Barcelona is thrust into a complex and labyrinthine mystery when her psychiatrist husband goes missing and she is forced to seek the help of her conservative brother-in-law in locating her missing spouse in director Joaquin Oristrell's Freudian period comedy. Alma is a modern woman of very modern means; her father Spain's foremost neurosurgeon and her husband, Leon, a devoted follower of controversial Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. After arriving home one summer afternoon to find her tearful husband mumbling incoherent words of woe, Alma's life is turned upside down when Leon suddenly disappears. With no one else to turn to than her lovelorn brother-in-law Salvador -- likewise a psychiatrist who secretly pines for Alma despite being married to her sister -- Alma's discovery of a strange manuscript on hysteria and female sexuality proves the launching point for a tireless quest to locate her missing husband and discover the true meaning behind his inexplicable disappearance. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide