Sitges 2019: ‘Advantages of travelling by train’. A hilarious trip to the depths of the mind

it Is very difficult to comment on the virtues narratives of ‘Advantages of travel by train’ without revealing the springs, the turns and the methods that Aritz Moreno used to launch the viewer his polyhedral, black and colourful vision of Spain and its spaniards, however much the reach of the miseries portrayed to be deeply universal. If you know the novel of Antonio Bat in that is inspired by and adapted with fidelity, to the point, to borrow whole phrases from the original text, you know what we mean. Very complicated.

What I can say is that it makes balance very valuable among the risk of the form of a narrative little (or nothing) reliable and the essential foundations of a comedy traditional: actors wonderfully directed, gags with pace, wit and visual self-confidence verbal. All of this is the glue of a riddle that Moreno, playful, invites the viewer to resolve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4zax2XhvM8

it All begins when an editor-in-literary, Helga Duck (Pilar Castro, perhaps the character that more changes with respect to the book), after leaving her husband in a nursing home, he meets a strange psychiatrist from the centre (Ernesto Alterio) who tells him stories of their patients. Some lead to others, the others contain third. And of course, Helga Duck has one of his own.

These stories will not go away happening, as might be expected, spreading out a few from the inside of their neighbours, in a narrative, symmetrical and exquisite.

life-Like (but less ugly), the stories of ‘Benefits of rail travel’ will contain among other, but not always: sometimes happen, as in a film of episodes, sometimes they cancel, and sometimes they comment. The spectator discovers, along with the characters, the magic behind the act of telling a story, a any. An act that always, as a minimum, keep a few lying around.

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what is or Is not a schizophrenic trash convinced of a conspiracy in the guild most unsuspected? Who are, in reality, mountains of bags that accumulate in a villa in the outskirts? is is There a way to end the abduction of children in which they are involved high international fees? What is strange, the new boyfriend of Helga Duck? And above all… are there any chances for love desigual between a man with bones of glass, and a woman with one leg longer than the other?

‘Benefits of rail travel’: we are Going to tell lies

none of that really matters because, as they say, the important thing is the journey. Not the train journey, but the journey for all these lives of majaderos that intersect with each other, as a version unmerciful and frightening of a film by Richard Altman. And a good part of the merit that you are so magnetic, in addition to a medidísimo script Javier Gullon (who has already faced another adaptation complicated, ‘Enemy’ from ‘The man doubled’ of Saramago) in the actors: to the above add Luis Tosar, Macarena García, Javier Botet or Belén Cuesta, among others.

This castle of lies and stories that folded back like claws on the spectator, going beyond a mere narrative game, also he is careful message that Moreno has been extracted from the original book. That is to say, an absolute pessimism when it comes to describing who we can trust: absolutely no one. Or in couples, or in family, or best friends, or of course in the strangers who speak to us in the train.

Perhaps it would have fit, to require the director some more contrasts in the staging, that sometimes pulls from own resources of the first Javier Fesser to inject caricature in their stories, and in some cases works better than in others. When the movie gets serious -the part of the children victims of war is spine-chilling-, it is not as frightening as it should be, but they are minor details: the tone of tragi-grotesque is maintained with brilliance throughout the movie, and the result is a memorable experiment visual on the power of a good lie.  

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The news Sitges 2019: ‘Advantages of travelling by train’. A hilarious trip to the depths of the mind was originally published in Espinof by John Tones.

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