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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A Spanish post-war drama directed by Jose Luis Cuerda and based on the novel of Alberto Mendez of the same title.The story is set in the Spanish city of Orense, in Northern Spain, in the 1940s, and tells the story of a family of communists struggling to survive after the victory of the fascists in 1939. The father Ricardo -played by Javier Camera- declared dead, lives hidden in the family basement with his subversive and prohibited books, and types works on his wife's behalf to earn some money. The mother, Elena -played by Maribel Verdu- lives and acts as a widow who makes ends meet by sewing and typing. Their teenage daughter Elenita and her boyfriend Lalo -played by Irene Escolar and Martin Rivas- are involved in guerrilla activities but try to escape the country, while child Lorenzo -played by Roger Princep- goes to the children school in town. There, Gonzalo gets the eye of Fr Salvador -played by Raul Arevalo- a seminarian and fascist ex-soldier who feels immediately attracted to Elena.The script is mediocre with stereotypical characters, predictable plot and events, and, most importantly, without emotion or heart. A soulless movie despite telling a story that should be moving and thought-provoking, and it ends being just pretentious. Nothing new in the exploration of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.Regarding the acting, Maribel Verdú and Javier Camera do not believe what they are playing, and their performances are mediocre, much below their acting abilities and quality. Raul Arevalo is good in his portray of the confused tempted priest. The rest of the supporting actors are OK in their roles, but child Roger Princep was awful to watch.There is nothing excellent or memorable about the film, just mediocrity. To be honest, the things I liked the most about this film were its atmosphere, the views of the Orense's city, and the title. While watching this movie I thought of a similar movie which, instead, showed all what this lacked in this - the Butterfly's Tongue.Despite the script being so poor, perhaps because the novel was not, the scriptwriters won a Goya -the Spanish Oscar- to the best script in 2008. The movie was also selected to represent the Spanish cinema in the Oscars in the same year, but did not make the final cut.

The triumph of Franco in Spain brought about a repression toward anyone that were considered communist. Intolerance from the church, which allied itself with the winners, took a hard line in order to defend their new reality in the country. Many opponents to the regime had to go to an exile that took them away from their country because of their ideas.Basically, this is the essence of Alberto Mendez's novel, that dealt in those difficult days the country lived after the war. We are presented a family that have to live in a small town where a father, Ricardo, has to hide from the Gestapo-like police, to save his own life. The wife, Elena, must try to live as normal life as she can, but instead of the quiet life she is looking for, trouble comes her way in an unexpected way.Salvador, the young seminarian, is a man with a troubled heart. He has been sent to the small town where Elena and her family are trying to live. To make matters worse, Salvador, who is the teacher of Lorenzo, Elena's young son, takes an interest in the beautiful mother. He is a hypocrite that cannot control his carnal impulses and tries to force himself upon her, causing the tragedy that will be the ruin of this family.Jose Luis Cuerda, the director, also helped Rafael Azcona to adapt the novel to the screen. Like every film about the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish directors, feel they are breaking new ground about the turmoil the conflict caused the Spanish people that had to live those terrible years. The director's feelings are on the side of the ones defeated that had to live the terrible ordeal.Maribel Verdu deserves better. She is a good actress, but the script, like in most Spanish films makes her the object of desire by the unscrupulous Salvador. Javier Camera does not have anything to do as Ricardo. Raul Arevalo's Salvador makes the most of his role in a film that goes nowhere.

Once again, the postwar period is used as stage for a good movie with magnificent actors who turn it into a big one, giving life to prominent figures who fight to survive, trying to give sense to their acts, no matter what. It is true that Javier Cámara's jump turns out to be artificial, maybe because he does not spread himself in dramatic quality and goes to the practical thing, but Maribel Verdú, in her better moment of the movie, reduces the fault completely. We have an adaptation that focuses on the conflict of one of the main characters of the original tale. The totally corrupted by the war morality of the religious man (something that reminds me to the soldier men of In Elah's Valley) If they had focused, for example, on the confinement of the husband, we would have another thing, better or worse, we do not know it, but it would be already another story. By the way, the child asks this question because he does not see the suicide. Is just the woman who runs towards the room when the husband says goodbye.

This movie is based in a very famous book published in Spain with the same title. The book is really hard and very moving. I know many people who has cried reading it, and that's really complicated. The film, on the contrary, leaves apart the hardest chapters of the books and they only appeared at a tangential way. So, the story focused on the problems of a priest-soldier and practically the whole 100 minutes are about this boring character and his boring conversations. I'm really sorry about the result, because there were many great expectations about this movie in Spain. Everything is bad in the movie and reminds all the worst of Spanish Cinema. For instance, the scene when the hidden father jumped through the window to suicide is absolutely surrealistic with the boy (it is supposed he is clever) asking his mother why is she crying. "'Cause your father has killed himself! Didn't you notice?" The mother should have answered that to the boy to make the scene even more surrealistic, or just to turn it directly into a comedy. A missed opportunity to create a great movie with a great story. Just for the record, none, absolutely no one wept at the crowded press preview, not even a singe teardrop.