IFFR 2010 – El Calambre
Movie: El Calambre (Matías Meyer, 2009, Mexico, France, 92 min. ) 
Date: Jan 28, 2010
Rating: 
(Not sure if any message was meant to be communicated.. )
Plot: Julien, a young French comedian, disembarks in Chacahua, a fishing community in Mexico’s pacific coast. He meets Pablo, a local fisherman who will guide him towards spiritual healing..
Cast: The local cast was nice.
Visuals: Oh man, opening scene: low-light, low-quality shot of the main character arriving at the village late in the evening. You can’t see a lot, mostly grainy. A lot of the following evening/night shots were of the same quality and I was forgiving because I thought it was due to limited resources, etc.
Then, suddenly, we get a crystal clear night scene: the grainy stuff was just the director’s choice of presenting the shot. Argh! Crappy.
Conclusion: If you hadn’t read the plot description, you’d be wondering about the plot for almost the whole movie; not a good sign. The main character’s torment was sometimes very intense and well portrayed; a couple of other scenes were also very well done, especially the mud bath scene where both main characters were strong and entertaining in their performance.
But, uhm.. Just skip the artistic grainy stuff, please?
