Colors of the Mountain (Sunday, June 5, 2011) (39)

I can see why some people would really like the Colombian film The Colors of the Mountain by Carlos César Arbeláez: it has a bunch of cute kids (including two albino kids!!), they play soccer and their lives are being upset by FARC-like guerrillas. It's all sorts of sentimental claptrap that many go in for. Sadly, the film is just these things and had no real emotional movement and not much of a plot either.

Manuel is a 9 year-old boy who loves playing soccer with his friends in his remote village in the Colombian mountains. His father is a poor, apolitical farmer, a good man and a careful, concerned parent. One day when the boys are playing soccer, the ball gets kicked far away to another hill where the guerrilla group in the area (something just like the FARC, though the name is never really mentioned) has placed a bunch of land mines. The boys are very sad that they won't be able to play anymore because they're not allowed to go retrieve the ball.

Meanwhile, Manuel's father is trying to avoid the guerrillas who are recruiting in the area. They demand that he show up at their meetings, but he always finds a way of avoiding them. He's worried that if he joins their militia he will be a target of the government army's raids into partisan villages.

All these politics fly over Manuel's head, and all he's concerned about is getting his ball back. As more and more of his classmates are pulled out of his one-room-schoolhouse school, he seems entirely oblivious to the pain and worry the adults are going trough.

There is some nice, subtle style that Arbeláez puts into the film, like how the colors of the mountains (see: title) are rich and beautiful at the beginning of the film and turn to gray and dull as the military conflict intensifies. This elegance doesn't really come through in the narrative, where we see things from Manuel's point of view, so details about the situation are totally obscure.

I appreciate that this is what Arbeláez is going for - rural guerrilla war from the point of view of a kid who can't be bothered by such things - but as a story-telling technique it's very frustrating. Considering I know there's a conflict, I would like to know who the players are in it. Are both sides, the guerrillas and the army, equally bad? Does Manuel's father prefer one side or the other? Why are they fighting?

It's very hard to watch a movie where we know important things are happening in the background, but the main point of interest is a kids lost soccer ball. I don't think it's a very effective way of showing the misery of living in the midst of a guerrilla war. It's just precious and treacly.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Rudo y Cursi (Tuesday, December 22, 2009) (205)

Rudo y Cursi is a totally fresh and funny comedy from writer/director Carlos Cuaron, brother of Alfonso Cuaron and co-writer of Y Tu Mama Tambien. For this film, Cuaron teams up with the two actors who made Tu Mama so good, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.

Here they play brothers in a poor Mexican town who play soccer on the weekends. One day, a scout for major league soccer teams visits their town and offers them the chance to play professionally. The brothers ultimately move to Mexico City and play for two different clubs, Luna as a goalie and Bernal as a forward. Both get wrapped up in off-field silliness (Bernal in a ridiculous Pop music singing career and Luna in gambling).

The two lead actors are fantastic. They are silly and work well with the rather gonzo nature of the story. They wear the ridiculous costumes well and are both totally believable as country bumpkin rubes lost in the big city with millions of dollars (tens of millions of pesos) at their fingertips. They work well together and it seems clear that the actors are friends off-screen and enjoy working next to each other. They really seam like competing brothers and that connection helps to push the story along well.

The writing is also hilarious and has a nice, easy, tight story. I smiled basically the whole time I watched the film and really like the simple device at the end, which could be a bit too neat, but worked well in this small movie. I give Cuaron all sorts of credit for writing something so fresh in a genre (sports, family comedy) that could be otherwise so overdone.

Stars: 3 of 4