A world scoop from The Puerta del Sol Blog: a preview screening of Marc Recha’s new film, Les mains vides, which will be one of very few films made with Spanish money to screen at the Cannes film festival this year. Recha (born, incredibly given the depth and quality of his work, in 1970, and interviewed, in Catalan, here) generally makes the kind of challenging arthouse fare which has reviewers worrying about the most basic things before sitting down – will I understand what relationship HE has with HER? Was SHE his DAUGHTER or his MOTHER? What is the symbolic significance of the WASHING MACHINE? And the Spain/France co-production Les mains vides (Catalan director, French language) is not exempt from such troubling questions. But this rural tale of the accidental death of an old woman and one man’s misguided attempt to keep her money is perfectly coherent in the end, making for a warm-hearted portrait of a tightly-knit community in Catalunya, up near the Spain/France border – a community stranded between coast and mountain, Spain and France, and between past and present. In my opinion, Recha has made an early candidate for a Spanish film of the year - though someone I saw it with called it “overly long and way overly demanding." Doesn’t art have the right to be demanding? It may even be art’s duty. Torremolinos 73, though, about a real-life couple who almost despite themselves started working for the Danish porn industry while the Franco regime was still in power, lives up to neither the kitsch promise of its title or the potential richness of its central idea.
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