Cinespaña: Amador

A drama centered on a young woman who takes a summer job caring for a bed-ridden older man, and the intimate secrets they begin to share with one another.

A young immigrant living on the outskirts of Madrid, Marcela struggles to keep her head above water. She’s stuck in a heading-nowhere-fast relationship with Nelson, whose work selling flowers doesn’t leave much to spare. Worse, she’s pregnant, but is too uncertain of her situation to tell anyone. Things look up when she gets a job tending the bedridden, outwardly curmudgeonly (yet secretly kind) Amador. When Amador dies unexpectedly, Marcela’s employment seems to be over; in a panic, she conceals this somewhat important fact while grappling with what life will hold for her now. The Peruvian Magaly Solier, notably stockier than her performances in The Milk of Sorrow and Altiplano, is note-perfect as Marcela. Hailed in some quarters as the Spanish Ken Loach, director Fernando Léon de Aranoa reveals a slightly softer side from his last two features. Playing on the gulf of experience that separates his two central characters, he throws a nod to his compatriot Almodovar in the film’s comic relief: the blasé, middle-aged call girl Puri, who shows up every Thursday to administer hand relief to the old man. Engaging and thought provoking in equal measure, the film won much-deserved acclaim at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Director Biography

Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa studied at the Complutense University of Madrid. He has written screenplays for both feature films and television, and also published award-winning short stories. Besides making several feature films including the internationally successful Mondays in the Sun, he recently directed an episode of Invisibles, a joint documentary for “Doctors Without Borders”, which screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. He currently teaches at the Sundance Institute and in Cuba. Amador is his fifth feature.