Ramon Salazar Movies

A fantasy-prone transvestite who is looking to make the leap to transsexual status imagines that he is the star of a lavish universe punctuated by elaborate musical numbers in director Ramon Salazar's stylish sophomore feature. Adolfo (Monica Cervera) is a die-hard romantic who currently shares a cramped apartment with Tomas (Miguel O'Dogherty). Though he was born a man, Adolfo prefers to go by the name Marieta, and is currently stashing away the money needed to shed the male appendage that is holding him back from full womanhood. Sex change operations don't come cheap though, and in order to raise said money Marieta must first land a decent paying job. Though one successful interview does find Marieta hired as a railroad station cleaner, the exhausted worker immediately falls asleep on the job and is quickly fired for doing so. It is in his sleep that Marieta truly comes alive though, and after falling asleep during a conversation at a nearby market, the dreamland Ginger Rogers is pulled to safety by handsome stock-boy El Reponedor (Pablo Puyol). As an intensely sexual relationship begins to develop between Marieta and El Reponedor, the aspiring transsexual discovers that even if he himself doesn't appreciate his one defining male characteristic, there are others out there who most certainly do. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Stones is a film about shoes which functions on the old Native American proverb, "Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins." The shoes, in this case, belong to an ensemble of wacky characters whose lives are anchored to a brothel on the outskirts of Madrid. Adela is a long-suffering madam who must balance whoring with motherhood; Anita is her disabled, dog-obsessed daughter; Joaquin is one of Adela's most loyal clients, a tango-dancing businessman; Maricarmen is a taxi driver who can't get over her husband's death; Isabel is an eccentric rich woman fascinated by a foot-reading fortune teller; and Leire is a washed-up shoe designer. Together, this motley crew struggles to scrape through life and stay happy, learning to look beyond the quality of the shoes that they wear and to appreciate their quirky personality traits. This first feature film by Spanish director Ramón Salazar shows many influences from the films of Pedro Almodóvar, which often feature an ensemble cast in a slice-of-life situation where the rules of the normal world need not apply. ~ Connor McMadden, All Movie Guide