Ricard Figueras Movies

Spanish helmer Jaime Rosales, who dazzled the world with his debut, the 2003 serial killer drama The Hours of the Day, returns to screens for the very different sophomore outing Fragments of Loneliness (AKA Solitary Fragments, 2007) - a defiantly understated and minimalist slice-of-life drama that dissects and explores a myriad of issues affecting contemporary European women. Throughout the narrative, Rosales crisscrosses two ostensibly unrelated substories, which only find a point of intersection in the blood relation of two minor characters. The first tale revolves around Adela (Sonia Almarcha), a woman who lives in the picturesque Basque region of northern Spain. She leads a generally unremarkable existence - separated from her husband Pedro (Jose Luis Torrijo), she struggles to raise their son, Miguelito (Eric Garcia) and provide for her own aging father (Juan Margallo) while working at a dull job in an office. When the monotony and pressure overwhelm Adela, she suddenly cuts loose and moves to busy Madrid, Miguelito in tow, to begin a new life as a conference assistant. Mother and son opt to share a flat with a woman named Ines (Miriam Correa and her romantic partner, Carlos (Luis Villanueva). Adela's life appears to be on the up and up; then tragedy strikes. Meanwhile, in the film's second tale, Ines's widowed mother, the supermarket proprietor Antonia (Petra Martinez) buckles under the strain wrought by her second and third daughters. One, Nieves (Nuria Mencia) indicates that she's dying of terminal cancer; the other; Helena (Maria Bazan) begs Antonia to tap her boyfriend Manolo (Jesus Cracio) for money to finance a second residence. Instead, Antonia opts to sell the first, which threatens to alienate Helena. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Traveling down the river from the distant Bolivian outpost of San Jacinto in 1945, moody traveler Timar (Grégoire Colin) reflects on his star-crossed affair with the eponymous Adela (Eulalia Ramon) at her husband's decrepit hotel. Because Adela was married, deceitful, and adept at using her feminine charms, trouble duly followed her steamy encounter with Timar, problems ranging from difficulty in finding good hired help to a sudden abundance of dead bodies, and culminating in a climactic courtroom showdown. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

A college instructor tries to deal with the frustrations of her life as she drifts uncomfortably into middle age in Me Ilamo Sara. Elvira Minguez plays Sara, a 40-year-old single mother who teaches at a university while sharing her home with her teenage daughter Virginia (Elena Castells) and her boyfriend Adrian (Francois Eric Gendron). Lately, Sara has not been getting along well with her friends and has very mixed feelings about Virginia's openness about her sex life; these dilemmas are compounded by the death of her father. Me Ilamo Sara was the debut feature for writer and director Dolores Payas. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this sex farce, two eccentric manufacturing families from far-flung regions of Spain have come to Madrid in order to try and influence a government ministry's decision about who will make a particular set of Army uniforms. The man of the house, in one of the families, has married into it purely as a business arrangement. His current extramarital arrangement is with the family company's lovely female lawyer. Meanwhile, his decidedly odd wife has been experiencing sexual ecstasies while reading self-help books, and her sister has been passing the years by longing for the return of an old lover, a political radical she lost track of years ago. It turns out that the former radical is now the government minister they all hope to influence, and the minister's assistant is intensely interested in his old flame, the sister. The competing family head is also pursuing the sister in the other family, under the mistaken impression that she is the adulterous lawyer. Meanwhile, a transformation is taking place with the do-it-yourself addicted wife. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi