Thursday, April 17, 2014
Wrinkles, review: 'quietly lovely'
Wrinkles (15 cert, 87 min); Director: Ignacio Ferreras; Stars: Martin Sheen, Matthew Modine, George Coe
"You're just in time for strip bingo!", a veteran inmate called Miguel tells elderly Emilio on his arrival at a care home, before admitting that he's pulling his leg and then trying to extort money out of him. This quietly lovely animated drama from Spain, which premiered back in 2011 in San Sebastián, uses piquant humour to leaven the sadness of an old man's abandonment – his son and daughter-in-law hang around barely for long enough to enter the building before whizzing off to get on with their lives.
Derived from a graphic novel, the film arrives here with the option to watch it dubbed or subtitled. It seems a cosier picture with the voice of Martin Sheen as Emilio, perhaps a more familiar one. I remember the vocal performances of the Spanish actors being extremely affecting – it's this original version, if possible, that you want to seek out.
We're used to animations privileging youthful perspectives above all else. This film, with tender, never oppressive sentimentality, posits old age as a second childhood, which is why the form makes sense. The analogy it suggests when Emilio makes his first nervous steps into the home is his first day at school, craving instantly to be returned to his mother. We get flashbacks, meanwhile, to other residents' experiences of first love, like stray wisps of memory which Alzheimer's hasn't yet snatched away. It's a compact and obliquely moving film, deftly constructed to let the dying of the light arrive, not as sunset, but a kind of dawn.
REVIEW: Calvary: atoning for sins of the fathers
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/397b1700/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Cfilm0Cfilmreviews0C10A7735110CWrinkles0Ereview0Equietly0Elovely0Bhtml/story01.htm
