Les Pel·lícules del meu pare (My Father’s Films)

Perhaps the most unconventional and egocentric film I have ever seen as tells about a man that just a few weeks ago passed away and his daughter discovering that he used to do movies that he never talked about them to her. The twist is that the man that was a producer/director is Augusto Martínez Torres and the real director/writer of the movie is also him. So this docudrama is a fictionalized tale that allows him to tell everyone about his work and also about how some Spanish cinema institutions do not take good care of Spanish films.

In the fictional narrative the daughter wants to learn more about the films and wants to recuperate the negatives, so she gets in touch with people that worked with her father, that actually are friends and co-workers of the real director, information that obviously I learned after watching the film. So the movie is really unconventional and somehow experimental Spanish style, as the shorts the producer/director did in the movie and did in real life are of the experimental and underground genres.

But with a voice over narrative done by the daughter the movie its attention grabber, even when at times is tedious, you get engaged with everything that is happening in the screen that not necessarily is related to what the voice over is telling. The movie is full of what it looks like gratuitous nakedness by the beautiful lead actress, but then at the end it makes sense as everything in the movie and in the father films is sexually related. Including a long unconventional lesbian interest sub-plot that the leading character has with a girl at the film institute where she’s researching her father films.

Definitively not for all audiences as is a sort of sexual charged (although nothing is really shown) experimental leaning to unconventional docudrama that could attract those that want to see what it looks and feel like the life of a not successful film director. Still the film has good cinematography and some nice tech specs.

I was confused with the movie style but as soon as the visual narrative got into the lesbian interest story, I became totally engaged with the film. Still the segment is unconventional, experimental and develops from raw attraction into raw sexuality Spanish style, of course. But I think that most of my known readers will definitively not like the movie and I do not recommend it, unless you are really familiar with experimental cinema.

Enjoy!