User Reviews

Yerma, a young woman whose marriage to Juan has produced no children, is frustrated because she sees the years go by without having the child she yearns for. It's clear Yerma doesn't love Juan. It's Victor, the young shepherd that has shown affection to her, that Yerma desires. Living in the backward region of Andalucia, she becomes an object of gossip because everyone has seen her with Victor.

"Yerma" the excellent play of one of Spain's best known poets, Federico Garcia Lorca, is given a tepid cinematic translation by its director, Pilar Tavora, who also adapted it for the cinema. This "Yerma" cries for a stronger hand to bring all that Lorca created, and worst of all, all the Lorcan poetry is not to be found in this version.

As already pointed out by another contributor, a memorable staging of the play by the Spanish actress Nuria Espert, is still vivid in one's imagination. Aitana Sanchez Gijon, a great beauty, is not exactly what one would have imagined for the lead role. Ms. Sanchez Gijon casts a bland presence in the movie and throws it out of balance.

The other performances are adequate, but the director didn't inspire her cast to do a better job the way she had staged the film. It's a dark piece of film-making that doesn't provoke the audience. Among the supporting players we see Irene Papas, who plays the old pagan woman. Juan Diego is seen as Juan, the older husband who is more afraid of his honor than what he has not brought to his marriage. Jesus Cabrero, appears briefly as Victor. Ana Fernandez, and Maria Galiana, who worked together in an extraordinary film, "Solas", are also seen in minor roles.

"Yerma" and Garcia Lorca deserve much better than this feeble attempt to bring it to a wide audience.

Any intention of weighing up the worth of any interpretation of the complicated personality of Federico García Lorca's YERMA obliges anyone with a long enough memory to go back to the 70s, when the brilliant actress Nuria Espert was touring the theatres of Spain with her unforgettable performance. Everything else since then inevitably becomes tangled up in comparisons.

Pilar Távora had no intention of imitating anything previously done by anybody; she is an expert, I think we can say that, on Andalucían culture in general, and the flamenco world in particular. Whether Aitana Sánchez-Gijón was the ideal choice remains very debatable; there was something that did not quite ring true in her portrayal of Yerma, an extremely intense rôle torn by her frustrated acceptance of what life has organized for her and her impossible love for another man. The violent passions which could only come out of an Andalucían soul seem to have been, perhaps, just beyond her reach. Juan Diego ("el señorito" in "Los Santos Inocentes", 1984) played well his part of Yerma's husband, stoically bearing up as well as he could, especially under the difficult threat of having to use an accent from the deep south, the province of Huelva. María Galiana only had to be her unrepeatable self: her theatre experience may well have helped out in the making of the film.

Acacio de Almeida's photography was pretty good, ably helped by Vicente Sanchez's music setting, which sounded just a little plagiaristic at times.

I give Pilar Távora's courageous attempt six out of ten, and that might just be a little generous.

WARNING: the Spanish language used is highly regionalistic and may prove rather difficult for students of the language, not helped by some microphone failures in softly spoken lines.