Friday Film Review-También La Lluvia (Even The Rain, 2010)

Friday, 20 January 2011
I write this review with a bit of apprehension because I absolutely loved this film. It was compelling, dramatic and uncomfortable (and, well, Gael García Bernal!). When two filmmakers, Sebastián (Bernal) and Costa (Luis Tosar) go to Boliva to make a film about Christopher Columbus they find themselves in the midst of a crisis, where the local population is rioting because of a water shortage. When their lead actor Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri), becomes the leader of the uprising they find themselves unable to escape the realities of the situation. También La Lluvia is almost two movies in one. The movie about Christopher Columbus and the issues with filming a movie about Christopher Columbus are both well done. One of the best features of the movie was that it avoided the common trend of implying that all the colonizers were equally evil and that Europeans and European descendants are just as culpable today as they were 500 years ago. That's not to say that colonization wasn't wrong but rather that Tambien La Lluvia brings several issues to the table. In one of the first scenes Sebastián says that they will be making the film in Spanish because "los españoles hablan español"  (Spanish people speak Spanish). The problems of making a film in a language other than English are present throughout the film. Furthermore, although Costa and Sebastián are sympathetic to the cause of the local populace the are incapable, for the most part of helping. Sebastián confronts one of the water companies about the increase in price but he too is one of the parties who only pays $2 per day to the local people. On that note, although Sebastián is originally set up as the one who is sympathetic to the people and Costa as a money hungry movie executive, as the film goes on they switch roles. Costa, in fact, becomes the hero and forms a friendship with Daniel who he antagonizes early on. In one of the final scenes, from the Christopher Columbus film, Daniel is being burned at the stake. It is one of the most compelling scenes in the film, you almost forget there was any other story. All the performances in the movie are so well done that the lines between their characters from the Christopher Columbus film and their 'real' characters become blurred. Overall, I found this to be not only a really meaningful film but one I couldn't look away from.