All films are shown at the Nerja Cultural Centre on Calle Granada
Sunday 6th May 5 pm Sigmund Freud’s Birthday
A Dangerous Method
(USA 2011) 99 min. Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender. Dir. David Cronenberg.
In 1907, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung began what promised to be both a momentous collaboration and the deepest friendship of each man’s life. Six years later they were bitter antagonists, locked in a savage struggle. In between them stood a young woman named Sabina Speilrein: a patient and lover to Jung, a colleague and confidante to Freud, and one of the greatest minds in modern psychiatry. This mesmerizing tale reconstructs the fatal triangle of Freud, Jung and Spielrein. It encompasses clinical methods and politics, hysteria and anti-Semitism, sexual duplicity and intellectual brilliance wielded as blackmail. Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley (Spielrein), Viggo Mortensen (Freud) and Michael Fassbender (Jung).
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
Wednesday 9th May 7 pm Fred Astaire’s birthday (May 10)
Funny Face
(USA 1957) 103 min. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson. Dir. Stanley Donen.
Splashes of vivid color light the way through Stanley Donen’s (of Singin’ in the Rain) very modern musical. Astaire is cast as as fashion photographer Dick Avery (a character based on Richard Avedon, the film’s “visual consultant”), who is sent out by his female boss Maggie Prescott to find a “new face”. It doesn’t take Dick long to discover Jo (Audrey Hepburn, who does her own singing), an owlish Greenwich Village bookstore clerk. Acting as Pygmalion to Jo’s Galatea, Dick whisks the wide-eyed girl off to Paris and transforms her into the fashion world’s hottest model. Along the way, he falls in love with Jo, and works overtime to wean her away from such phony-baloney intellectuals as Professor Emile Flostre. The Gershwin tunes include the title song, “S’wonderful”, and “How Long Has This Been Going On”; among the newer numbers is Kay Thompson’s energetic opener “Think Pink!”. For years available only in washed-out, flat prints, you can now see Funny Face in its restored Technicolor and VistaVision glory on the big screen.
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
Sunday 13th May 5 pm – Cinema Francaise
Mozart’s Sister
(France 2011) 120 min. David Moreau, Marie Féret, Marc Barbé. Dir. Rene Feret.
Mozart’s Sister is a re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart (Marie Féret), five years older than Wolfgang (David Moreau) and a musical prodigy in her own right. Originally the featured performer, Nannerl has given way to Wolfgang as the main attraction, as their strict but loving father (Marc Barbé) tours his talented offspring in front of the royal courts of pre-French revolution Europe. But as she approaches marriageable age, she is forbidden from playing the violin or composing. Chafed by the limitations imposed on her gender, she finds relief through her friendships with the son and daughter of Louis XV – who offer her the opportunity to challenge the established social order. Original Version (French) with English subtitles.
Wednesday 16th May 7 pm
Carnage
(USA 2011) 80 min. Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Carnage is a razor-sharp, biting comedy centred on parental differences. After two boys duke it out on a playground, the parents of the “victim” invite the parents of the “bully” over to work out their issues. A polite discussion of clidrearing soon escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colours. Directed by Roman Polanski,Carnage stars Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, and Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly – all Academy Award winners and nominees.
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
Sunday 20th May 5 pm World Cinema
The Land of Blood and Honey
(USA 2011) 127 min. Goran Kostić, Zana Marjanović, Rade Šerbedžija. Dir. Angelina Jolie.
It’s unlikely that Shakespeare had Bosnia-Herzegovina in mind when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, but Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey makes the location change seem like a logical fit. In 1992, her star-crossed lovers, Danijel and Ajla, are just getting to know each other when war breaks out. Danijel, a Serbian policeman, becomes a captain, and Muslim artist Ajla becomes a captive. When Ajla ends up in Danijel’s camp, he attempts to protect her without attracting undue attention, so she serves the men meals, but the threat of rape is always around. After the army reassigns Danijel to Sarajevo, she’s left to fend for herself, while her sister remains at home, surrounded by snipers. Ajla eventually finds herself again under Danijel’s protection, but then his high-ranking father gets wind of the arrangement, just as UN peacekeeping forces move in on the Balkans. They’re two individuals out of thousands, but their fates illustrate the futility of war, in which fear and resentment can turn the warmest hearts cold.
Original Version (Bosnian, Serbian) with English subtitles.
Wednesday 23rd May 7 pm
Melancholia
(USA 2011) 135 min. Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Dir. Lars von Trier.
Leave it to Director Lars von Trier to conceive an intergalactic sci-fi metaphor for a psychological disorder – and then make it work so astonishingly well. In this beautifully filmed movie about the end of the world, Justine and Michael are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of her sister Claire . A planet called Melancholia is heading directly towards Earth and threatening to collide. Meanwhile, tensions are mounting and relationships are fraying as the family deals with their fears. Firmly rooted in the filmmaker’s esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic – lush, ripe, rich, delicious.
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
Sunday 27th May 5 pm
The Iron Lady
(UK 2011) 104 min. Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman. Dir. Phyllida Lloyd.
Nominated for four BAFTAs including Leading Actress and Supporting Actor, The Iron Lady tells the compelling story of Margaret Thatcher, a woman who smashed through the barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male-dominated world. The story concerns power and the price that is paid for power, and is a surprising and intimate portrait of an extraordinary and complex woman. Sincerely directed by one woman and smartly written by another, the film stars an unsurpassable Meryl Streep, whose ability to empathize with her characters has never been more gloriously impassioned than it is in this titanic performance. This is acting of the highest order.
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
Wednesday 30th May 7 pm Irving Thalberg’s birthday
Grand Hotel
(USA 1932) 112 min. Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford. Dir. Edmund Goulding.
This Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a sweeping soap opera about the guests at Berlin’s Grand Hotel. Several plots intertwine, but mostly it’s about Stars! Stars! Stars! Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and both Barrymore brothers head up the cast. Garbo is luminous as Grusinskaya, the neurotic and famous-but-slipping dancer and, yes, she “vonts to be alone.” John Barrymore is a cat burglar with blue blood and a heart of gold, and Lionel Barrymore happily caroms off him as Mr. Kringelein, a dying man who wants to live out the time he has left with the rich. Joan Crawford is perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie: as Flaemmchen, a young career girl trying to decide between secretary and tart, she is uncharacteristically funny, vivacious, and downright bubbly. Along the way we discover that money, fame, and titles don’t guarantee happiness, and being a jewel thief doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. The nicest touch is the hint that other, minor plots swirl around the edges of the film, suggesting that we’ve only seen a small chapter of the hotel’s story.
Original Version (English) with Spanish subtitles.
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