Even the Rain (15) ****
With Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share Cannes-bound, here’s a timely reminder of the
filmmaker’s considerable influence. Regular Loach screenwriter Paul Laverty and
director Icíar Bollaín (who acted in Land
and Freedom) have constructed a very smart, socially aware fable about a
Spanish film crew – headed by heartthrob-Herzog Gael García Bernal – who arrive in Bolivia to shoot an epic about Columbus’s
entry into the New World, only to start blindly perpetuating the exploitation
their own project seeks to denounce. As production gradually unravels amid
protests over the privatisation of the region’s water supply, tense, pointed action ensues: Bollaín cranes her camera
to highlight the real-world injustices developing beyond the on-location ego
trips. Striking performances from Luis Tosar, as a cynical yet flexible
producer, and Juan Carlos Aduviri, as the native who becomes a figurehead for
those who don’t have the luxury of playacting.
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