Film and Film

"The dancer and the thief", Fernando Trueba (2009)

The film takes place in the Chile post-Pinochet and recreates two particular characters with their dreams and attitudes, and their different desires to live; a well told story is organized around them in images full of contrasts and backlight, that is about a Spanish director started in the 1980s in the film, when his country generated a cinema school dedicated to the study of light and backlight, which faded quickly (with the unexpected death of its initiator, the cameraman Luis Cuadrado); anyone who wants to see something of that, can make it deeply in this film, and incidentally enjoy the film as image and composition film, because we cannot allow to reduce the film just to the story told, which is made to appeal the general public, with various ingredients relevant to the case: the history of love, protagonists in family and economic distress, a light and fun character who conquers the spectator, drama and frustration of the other protagonist embodied masterfully by the Argentine Ricardo Darín, suspense and assault to a Lieutenant of the dictatorship that has made a fortune illegally and thus, stealing the "bad" which in cinema is very "good", etc.

The film was directed by a film director and producer (who already won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1993 with "Belle epoque"), in combination with a successful writer and screenwriter, remembered by "The postman" the Chilean Antonio Skármeta; both of them delivered as a result a well-done film product, to achieve a good box office and aspire to many awards; It was in fact selected by Spain to represent them for the Oscar in 2010 and in spite of it was not between foreign tapes nominated the award was for another tape "The secret in their eyes" of Juan José Campanella, but, again, starring by Ricardo Darín.

Fernando Trueba made his first feature film "Opera prima" in 1980, a great satire and burlesque to the pretended intellectual scope of Madrid at that time, which made him creditor to the title of being the founder of the so-called "Madrid comedy", style and genre that continued harvesting many successes, the biggest of them "Be Wanton and Tread No Shame" 1985; even the Oscar of "Belle epoque" is part of these features. He began to enter the drama at the beginning of this century with "Embrujo de Shanghai", which was not very well graded, therefore, it is surprising to see him again keep in such attempt with "The dancer and the thief”, that’s why that light and cheerful air which he gives to this film, obviously comes from the comedies’ expert, who cannot leave his humor… that it is not bad to the story.