User Reviews

Cradle in a novel of Ferrán Torrent, counts the history of a university professor, Lluís Dalmau (Pere Ponce), that, stopped by his political activity, it is deported to an island located to kilometers of the coast where a small community lives on men and women that subsists of the salt mines. We are in 1969. The first intention of the professor is to escape, but it decides to postpone its plans of flight since, little by little, it feels more fascinated by the island and the mysteries of its inhabitants. At the same time, it initiates a loving relation with an attractive farmer, Feli (Cristina Plazas), that is mother of a girl. Patrice (Feodor Atkine), nicknamed "the Belgian", maintained idyll with Feli, to that still it wants. But, persecuted by a dark past, "the Belgian" it has not been allowed to formulate plans of future with them. Sigfrid Monleón is released in the long film after one long race like critic of cinema, producer, scriptwriter and director of shorts films, writer of some books and habitual collaborator of mass media. Homónima also does adapting the novel of Ferran Torrent, that writes with him the script, published now in Castilian. 'The island of the Dutch' is a film that counts on excessive simplicity, elegance and beauty out of the times and universal subjects (the political resistance, the social mobilization, the love, sex, the nature), that take advantage of to the maximum the natural opportunities that a beautiful and calm island contributes and a novel that counts many and interesting histories. It is a film of difficult classification and explanation. It starts with the deportation of a anti-Franco dissident to a small Mediterranean island at the end of the Sixties. From parallel histories are developed there that affect of simultaneous form all the personages. The protagonist plans fled his from her arrival, but the magic and the magnetism of the citizens of the island cause that it begins to consider if is worth the trouble. It makes friendship with the alone Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) of the town that is the one in charge to watch it; it participates actively with a sector of the population, next to the mayor, who is against the urbanization of the island( paradoxical is the meeting with the speculators in the Palau of the Generalitat); it enjoys in the calm sea, the mysterious caves and interminable pure air strolls; it discovers in a wonderful woman love and calmed, romantic and pure but practically impossible sex and is interrogated continuously on an enigmatic personage of whom little they know in the island. They are many, perhaps too many, histories that open to the spectator everything a fan of personages, situations and expositions that cause the reflection. Sigfrid has rolled a tempered film, something improper of a prime opera, in which there is much of maturity and little of improvisation but in which it notices a lack of depth in the personages and relations, when trying to include so much, so that in some cases means are had left to construct. Catalonian's film in own language, is united to all those that are forming the Catalan cinema, with directors like Francesc Bellmunt, Pons Luck, Agustí Villaronga and so many others, that they contribute one mixed Iberian and Mediterranean vision that conforms another particular way to make cinema.