MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Kühe [de])

Spain 1991
d: Julio Médem
Tartan Video (Region 0 uk)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

The second Carlist war, 1875. Panicking under fire, Basque woodcutter Irigibel drops to the earth and smears himself with blood gushing hot from the neck of his mortally wounded neighbour, Mendiluze. The battle over, he crawls out from a cart-load of the dead, naked but unremarked, except by a curious, solitary cow. Medem's trenchant, daring directorial debut cuts through the decades like an axe. 1905: the neighbours' sons feud and Irigibel embarks on a clandestine affair with his counterpart's sister. 1915: her bastard son Peru grows up alongside his half-sister, while the boy's parents elope to America and take him with them. 1936: Peru returns to photograph the Spanish Civil War. Medem is unexpectedly impatient with that old standby of Spanish cinema, the epic historical melodrama. His movie is swift and urgent - it's closer to Jane Campion than Carlos Saura - and he has a sharp eye for la vida loca. Captured at moments of crisis and decision, his characters are forced to confront the precariousness of their rural existence and the great black hole of their own mortality. Imperviously, implacably bovine - it's somehow typical of this startlingly original picture that cows should carry the bulk of the symbolism.
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Medem's acclaimed first feature is an epic portrayal of two feuding families spanning sixty years, from 1875 to 1936 and the Spanish Civil War. Carmelo Gómez plays three roles in the film's four intertwined short stories about two Carlist soldierone who dies due to the cowardice of the otherand their families, united through the love affair between the son and daughter (Ana Torrent) of the soldiers. Set against the hauntingly beautiful Basque countryside, the film both mocks and accentuates this rural expression by its unusual perspective-much of this drama of betrayal, butchery, and rampant passions is seen through the eyes of the cows that are so crucial to these people's livelihoods. (The bovine gaze has variously been categorized as "impartial," "uncomprehending," and "bored disinterest" by critics unwittingly playing their part in Medem's cinematic trick.) Other visual jokes similarly revolve around "Basqueness"-the typical log-chopping competition becomes a thing of magical realism. But this in no way lessens the impact. Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times, "This stunning feature debut is clearly the work of a born filmmaker with a talent for translating memory into images so sharp and sensuous you can almost touch and smell them."
— PFA