LORD, GIVE ME PATIENCE/ SENOR, DAME, PACIENCIA
Spain, 2017, 95 minutes, Colour.
Jordi Sanchez, Rossy De Palme, Megan Montaner, Sylvia Alonzo, Eduardo Casanova, David Guapo, Salve Reina, Bore Buiila, Andres Velencoso.
Directed by Alvaro Diaz Lorenzo.
This comedy was a very popular hit in Spain in 2017. It has very favourable comments from Spanish viewers on the IMDb. Whether we so successful beyond Spain is a good question. Many of the references are particularly local and their intentions and irony may go over the heads of foreign viewers.
This is a heightened story of a dysfunctional family. The father is a banker, very conservative as seen by even refusing friends London’s, but put to the test with the behaviour of his children. Veteran Rossi day Palme, in so many of Almodovar’s films, plays the mother, an engaging character, good listener to her children, supportive but trying to moderate her husband’s views, suddenly killed in a car accident.
However, she does not disappear from the film! Main plot of the narrative is a journey to a northern river to scatter her ashes. Her portrait is on the – and there are many dialogue sequences as she speaks from the to her devoted but sometime desperate husband.
His oldest daughter seems a sensible enough type, but is married to a husband from Catalonia, supporting Barcelona in football or is the father is fanatical about Madrid – and hostile to catalyse and
Basques. Her husband is ordinary enough sometimes seems to be a bit thick. And she has not told her father that she is pregnant – and, when he finds out, he has a dread of a Catalan granddaughter and her football loyalties. He has known his son is gay but has refused to admit it, quite homophobic, and dismayed when his son has a black partner, Basque of Senegalese origin, an opportunity for racist comments. The other daughter, though the student heart and a painter, has teamed up with Leo, and many might call a book head, thinking that he is a radical protester but putting his foot in it and trying to save himself all the time. Off they go on a north, held up by the police, who are causing global problems, but the head of the police sharing football perspectives with the father – and called on later to help in the search for of his daughters.
Which means that there are all kinds of tangles, arguments, the daughter trying to break off with Leo, his making a fool of himself while out paddling and having to be rescued. They have already met the rescuer when asking directions and the young daughter is immediately infatuated by him. And the breakup goes badly.
There is also one of the strangest spruce characters in Spanish movies. On the pastoral level, he gives good advice to the father, Even quoting Pope Francis homosexuals, “Who am I to judge?”, Sympathetic to the black friend, ready to have funeral payments on PayPal. Later it is discovered, patronising clubs, having free meals and drinks for his 20 years of ministry. He does turn up at the end at the funeral ceremony, not charging the father.
The father chokes on an almond but is saved by the friend – and the priest explaining that if the sun was not going, he wouldn’t have had the boyfriend, and the father would, instead, be dead!
Lots more shenanigans, all kinds of reconciliations, good advice from the mother from the urn.
It’s the kind of story that, of course, could be replayed in any other country.
