The title refers to a suit that Jorge (Quim Gutirrez) sees every day in a store window. It symbolizes all that he seems to want but cannot attain. Jorge recently acquired his business degree and had big plans about his future. Then his father suffers a debilitating stroke, and Jorge ends up taking over his father's janitorial job at the Madrid apartment building where hes lived all his life. He spends afternoons on the roof with his friend Israel (Raul Arevalo) and nights thinking about his childhood sweetheart (Eva Pallares), whose hand me downs his family used to wear. Meanwhile, Jorges brother Antonio (Antonio De La Torre) is spending his last days in prison desperately trying to get Paula (Marta Etura), a female inmate, pregnant so she can get sent to the maternity ward and avoid the abuse she receives being in the larger prison population.
DarkBlueAlmostBlack (Strand Releasing)
Sanchez Arevalo delivers a strong character-based story that mixes social realism with humor and romance. Theres a definite sense of class and place as these characters all seek some kind of reinvention of themselves. A subplot involving one characters growing concern about possibly being gay is often played out with trite clichs, but the films humor and compassion work to offset that.
The actors form an appealing ensemble, bringing a warmth and appeal that make the film more compelling than its familiar themes might normally merit. Sanchez Arevalo has previously made a series of short films and DarkBlueAlmostBlack is in some ways like a series of short ideas woven together to make a feature narrative. Although the film starts a bit awkwardly, Sanchez Arevalo eventually intertwines his stories in a satisfying and occasionally even unexpected ways.
Love for Sale (Strand Releasing)
Self-reinvention, or at least trying to start anew, is also at the heart of Brazils Love for Sale from Karim Ainouz, the director of Madame Sata (which had its local premiere at the 2003 San Diego Latino Film Festival). Love for Sale (originally and more poetically titled Suely in the Sky in Brazil ) focuses on Hermila (a stunningly mesmerizing Hermila Guedes). In a lovely opening sequence of grainy home movies, we see Hermila almost giddy with love as she tells us about the man who fathered her child and promised her happiness. But happiness never came, and Hermila and her young son return to her poverty-stricken home town in northern Brazil. She comes home to try and figure out what to do and to get help with her son who she lets cry himself to sleep every night. She eventually decides on raffling herself off for a night in paradise and then using the money to leave town. Her scheme, however, meets with disapproval from her family and hostility from some of the locals.
As with Madame Sata, Love for Sale centers its story on a person who acts in defiance of social conventions. The protagonists of both of Ainouz films embrace life and behave with a certain flamboyance that attracts both attention and disapproval. Ainouz has a casual style of storytelling that relies mostly on visual elements from Hermilas face to the bright, hot landscape (the film benefits from the cinematography of Walter Carvalho). The raffle idea doesnt even enter the story until about halfway through and Ainouz avoids pat resolutions in scenes. In the end, the story feels a little thin and we never feel like weve gotten close to Hermila, but then shes someone who doesnt seem willing to reveal all to anyone so maybe Ainouz tone is a good fit for the film.
DarkBlueAlmostBlack (in Spanish with English subtitles) and Love for Sale (in Portuguese with English subtitles) are unrated but recommended for mature audiences. Both films are also performance driven works with especially fine work by actresses Etura in DarkBlueAlmostBlack and Guedes in Love for Sale .
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