Astronautas

I saw this film at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival.

Astronautas comes from Spanish director Santi Amodeo, who attended the film and gave a Q&A session after the film. The title of the movie refers to someone who may have all the comforts of modern life, but remains disconnected from his environment. Daniel (played by Nancho Novo) is such a person. A former heroin addict, Daniel is working through a decalogue, or 10-step recovery program. As part of his therapy, he is renovating his apartment, which in itself is a metaphor for the rebuilding of his life.

One day Daniel finds a teenage girl (Teresa Hurtado) waiting outside the door of his neighbour's abandoned apartment, who turns out to be his neighbour's younger sister. He gradually admits her into his life, and in the process, she affects and changes him.

Astronautas was not quite as comedic as I assumed from the festival guide description, but was rather a dramatic story with lighter moments and surreal animated segments seeded throughout. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and it provided a different view of a subject tackled by another film at this year's festival, Clean, with Nick Nolte and Maggie Cheung. Both movies had at their core the story of a heroin addict trying to get their life back on track, but each told their tale in a unique way.

Some tidbits from the Q&A:

• This was his first solo directing effort. His two previous films, The Pilgrim Factor and Bancos were co-directed with Alberto Rodriguez.

• The animated interludes throughout the movie reflect Daniel's personal reality.

• The people with bowling balls for heads in the animated segments come from the animator on the film, who was asked by Amodeo to come up with a prototype of man.

• When Laura removes paper cutouts of bowling balls from a drawer in the apartment, it represents her taking out Daniel's life from the drawer into the real world.

Daniel is an ex-drug-addict that tries to rebuilt his life. To do it, he has written a Decalogue of actions to do. All seems to be fine, but the apparition of a fifteen-year-old girl in front of his door (she is the little sister of his ex-neighbor) will change his life a little, as he is forced to take care of her. At first sight is quite comical, but watching to it slowly, you'll be able to realize that it describes a hard life and it is more a drama. The acting is just correct, and the building of the characters is good bad nothing more. The story is maybe too much absurd and the chapters that it is divided makes it a little strange to follow, probably is too weird to result good, but it is not bad, just different.

Daniel is a 40-year-old man. He's drugged and has got a bad life. But one day, he decides to start again and become a new man with a new ORDINARY life.

The ORDINARY LIFE is the lead topic of this movie. How can you be ORDINARY? Is dangerous to be ORDINARY? It's good to be ORDINARY? Daniel doesn't think so. He just plays his role in the real life, acting like somebody like me, like us.

One day, He finds out a little girl, played perfectly by the young Teresa Hurtado. She's the person who will take Daniel to the Earth. Just enjoy the movie. A good ACID comedy about to be ORDINARY and have got an ORDINARY life.

I think this movie could have been called ORDINARY PEOPLE.

Some time ago I talked about Spanish cinema and about its quality in terms of horror cinema. I said that it didn't live up to the hype of what they do now in the United States. But I didn't talk about any other genre, and I have explained how much I like films done in this country. Filmmakers tend to make movies that are very personal. Directors commit to such point that any movie seems to be their first and, even when it is shown across the whole country, seems like an independent feature.

Santi Amodeo's film, "Astronautas" ("Astronauts") starts as something difficult to comprehend, with a man walking alone in some place similar to a forest, then talking to some men who won't let him go and one minute later running away as a desperate animal that looks for a new life. The truth is that the man is indeed in the search of a new life. We learn he is named Daniel (called "Dani" by the people who know him) and that he is following a Decalogue, because he wants to desintoxicate himself. Now he is in an apartment, painting, cleaning, eating healthy… With Dani alone in his new life, the movie reminds of "Cast Away", because of the situation and the work the main actor's performance needs. I'm comparing a Spanish actor named Nacho Novo with Tom Hanks, but well…Hanks ended up in an island, when he was an office worker, and we can perfectly notice he has no clue about staying alive in these terms, so he has to make sacrifices for that objective; and makes friends with a ball, catches an eats fish, makes fires…Hanks' performance is wonderful.

And although from another continent, Novo's performance is wonderful too. You realize how tiring is for him to paint the house and do all the things he has to, because you can tell he once lived in the streets and consumed drugs by just looking at his face. Now his only company are two dogs that follow him everywhere and the other axis of the story, a 15-year old named Laura (newcomer and natural Teresa Hurtado), who after a series of events, crashes in his housing. The good thing about the screenplay is that when it is extremely hard for him, Dani really wants to change; for good.

For example, Laura likes him but he knows he can't even think about getting involved with a girl her age; until he realizes she could be useful for some of the steps of the Decalogue. The thing with the Decalogue's steps is that we don't know them all, only Dani does. We find out what they say when the movie senses it convenient, and that's great, because we can imagine all of Dani's thoughts. Telling steps, or telling Dani's progress in his new phase would be ruining your experience of the movie, but I'll say that in one scene, Laura sees some things she shouldn't have, which hurries up some events.

Director Santi Amodeo masters everything incredibly; from the beginning sequence, with a lot of sarcasm and intelligence, to the "Buffalo 66"-esque ending. His camera moves a lot when lots or things are happening, and in other occasions, when everything is quiet, it stays still, changing shots, as a photo camera that takes pictures. There's a marvelous thing about the music, too. It is all original by Amodeo, who also wrote the film, and a band called Lavadora. It manages to reflect each part of the film with each song, and the camera makes everything go round and round when songs start playing. About the title, I believe it is "Astronauts" because of the men in space Dani drew in his Decalogue; or maybe because he is so far away from himself and the rest of the world, almost to become unrecognizable.