Such pandemonium is commonplace among the more artistically adventurous films at any festival. Uncomfortable murmuring spawned the familiar sounds of seat backs slamming, rustling of bags, and, soon enough, mass exodus. As the light gradually dims over the lengthy real time shot, which approaches absurdity but skirts it ever so slightly, the audience’s reaction became more hostile and more hostile.
Nine in the morning is hardly a time to watch any film, but Honor de cavalleria was horribly served by such scheduling: the introductory scene takes place at night, as Quixote beckons to his portly squire to fetch him a laurel crown. Speaking of the Quinzaine, it’s where I first saw the film, or a fair chunk thereof, at an infamous, maybe soon to be legendary projection: it’s rare that one sings the praises of a film that one has walked out on, but circumstances took over on the Croisette. I’m sure the average Juan had much to say about a director who dared adapt the most cherished novel in the Spanish language - none other than Cervantes’ Don Quixote - as a film that could pass for moving landscape photography, with first-time non-actors in the roles of Quixote (played by a retired tennis teacher) and Sancho Panza (a construction worker), spoken in Catalan, and shot on digital video for the price of a dinner for four at El Bulli, wine included. (1) The film’s enthusiastic introducer did not disagree: two days prior, Argentine critic and former BAFICI head Quintin went about describing the film at its Austrian unfurling using the same over-the-top phrasing, to a less dense, but equally appreciably, crowd at Vienna’s most spacious theatre, the Gartenbaukino.īut this is a refrain that I’ve heard from a certain cadre of hardcore Spanish critics since the film was premiered at the Quinzaine earlier this year, soon after being released to an unsuspecting Spanish populace.
#HONOR DE CAVALLERIA ALBERT SERRA FULL#
It takes a whole lot of moxie, or to use a phrase that’s appropriate for this context, cojones, to make superlative claims for your own work, but there was a defiant yet jocular Albert Serra proudly standing in front of a full house at the second screening of Honor de cavalleria (Honor of the Knights) at the Viennale making the claim that his feature debut was the greatest Spanish film of the last 30 years.