We saw this at the Toronto Inter. Film Festival Sept. 12. The director, Carlos Vermut, was there for a Q&A afterwards. I chose this movie because I had seen Najwa Nimri in a movie several years ago, and I thought she was good.
The first 80% of the movie proceeds logically. Lily, a famous Spanish singer, has been found unconscious on the beach in front of her house (what happened we never find out). When she regains consciousness, she has lost her memory. This is a problem because after 10 years of seclusion, she is about to go on another concert tour. She needs the money. He long-time manager and friend has a problem: how to get Lily to be able to sing her old songs in the same way when she doesn't remember anything about them. An intriguing premise.
Meanwhile, in the same town, Violetta, a single mother, is a karaoke singer who specializes in singing Lily's songs. Lily's manager happens to catch Violetta's act, and she hire Violetta to come and give Lily daily lessons on "how to be Lily." Violetta has to teach Lily how to sing her own songs, how to move on stage, etc.
As a side plot, Violetta has an obnoxious daughter who keeps demanding things: money for a new smart phone, etc. When her mother doesn't give her what she wants, she destroys things in the house and then gets a knife and threatens to commit suicide unless her mother gives her what she wants. Violetta has been sword to silence about her tutoring Lily, but of curse her daughter wonders where she keeps disappearing to. The daughter follows her and discovers what's going on. The daughter sees this as a way to get rich: tabloid articles, talk shows, perhaps a book, etc. Violetta of course is devastated since she has admired Lily all her life and just wants to help her. (How this relates to the rest of the movie is completely beyond me. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's all a red herring.)
So far, so good. But in the last 20% or so of the film, all sorts of things happen at such a rapid pace the audience can't really keep track. None of the things (a long list of incongruous and incomprehensible things) is backed up by details in the previous 80% of the movie. In fact, most of them CONTRADICT things that have been established earlier. Just as an example, Lily reveals that she didn't write any of her songs herself--her mother did. Her mother was an aspiring singer, but then pregnancy derailed her plans and she drifted into drug use. What happened to the amnesia? ???? Lily fires the long-time (10+ years) agent and friend in a snap decision. Not believable from what we have been told in the first 80% of the move. And on and on. Each scene introduces totally new information, often contradicting what we know from the first 80% of the movie.
At the "end" (yes, " ") of the movie, everyone around us was saying "What was that about? Did you understand it?" And no, we did NOT understand it AT ALL.
The first questions to the director (and writer...it's his baby completely) were techie movie buff questions about the music, etc. Finally question #5 came:
"I didn't understand this movie at all. What was it about?" Some of the audience clapped. Director: "I'm not going to answer that question. It's up to you to figure it out." Scattered boos. A lot of people (including me) walked out at that point.
Now I have seen more than my share of French movies that leave you hanging: "Will the main character do X or Y?" That's fine. I can deal with that. You can use the clues in the rest of the movie to build a case for either X or Y. But, to make an analogy, this was like a murder mystery where at the end you discover the person you thought was dead wasn't dead at all, some unknown character was dead, and the murderer was someone who didn't even appear in the movie until the end. And nothing had anything to do with the rest of the movie. In other words, total nonsense.
To me, this shows utter contempt for the audience. You do not make a movie to entertain yourself or show how clever you are (that's called pretentiousness). You make a movie to entertain people, and maybe make them think. This did neither, and it did it in a spectacularly misguided way.
