Cannes. Solitary Fragments.

"Jaime Rosales beautifully consolidates the achievement of his distinguished debut, The Hours of the Day, with Solitary Fragments [La soledad], a leisurely but rewardingly intense dual narrative that delicately unpicks the secret lives of women," writes Jonathan Holland in Variety of this Un Certain Regard entry.

"Polyvision plays a major role in this project, with the screen divided into two parts," notes Vitor Pinto at Cineuropa. "Rosales decided to project onto each part different shots of the same scene, which focus either on characters' close-ups or simply on the set. Actors often remain out of the frame - a risky choice, which effectively gives the film a contemplative style, never overshadowing, through a simple follow-up of the plot."

"When a character leaves one room and goes into the other, occupying one space in favor of the other while both spaces continue to be shown on screen, it amplifies the physical presence of the character by also showing the absence of it elsewhere, which is an apt visual metaphor for Rosales's story of people as islands or separate entities that might want to connect but never really do," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "La soledad radiates with the intensity yet the normalit of daily life as few films do. It is Big Brother without the sensationalism, a soap without the artifice and a documentary without the wobbly camerawork and dark interiors."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2007 5:04 AM