Review of Mia Sarah

Mia Sarah (2006)
10/10
A Romantic Comedy with Genius
31 December 2006
Gustavo Ron, the young author of MIA SARAH, possesses an own style that he drinks in the fountains of the classic big ones Yes, of original one might qualify MIA SARAH, the unusual first opera of this new director, that starts out in the feature film with a bold proposal, counterflow in the current Spanish cinema. It is more, this first feature film distills poetry, surrealism and magic, absent values in the screens of the cinematic generation of the new century.

Born in Madrid (1972), but formed in Barcelona, Gustavo Ron graduated in Production, Script and Direction in the famous London International Film School a decade ago. There he learned the profession –for he took celluloid in the blood- and started to collaborate in tasks of production and script in Spanish, French, German and American movies. At the same time, he has directed three shorts and a documentary film. Afterwards, among other works –for he also cultivates the musical composition and the poetry-, he obtained the confidence of two Galician producers: Andrés Barbé and Julio Fernández to make MIA SARAH.

This film has surprised me very positively. In the first place, for his optimistic tone -the public goes out of the happy room-, where a healthy but not naive sense of the humor presides over all the story. Next, for his neat staging. Gustavo Ron really knows cinema; he composes the scenes with neat supreme one and great sensitivity artistic, besides achieving sequences of enormous emoticons without falling in the sentimentalism nor in the concession to the audience. Sober but stimulating, amusing and lyrical at the same time, this young filmmaker has written with Edmon Roch a screen play where it is not in excess nor a frame, with some dialogs well measured -not at all usual thing in the Spanish cinema-, misses with a soundtrack of exception and a design of production, that it becomes definite in a planning in CinemaScope where the coloring likewise has a dramatic and even symbolic sense.

Filmed in Coruña, Betanzos and London, MIA SARAH has reminiscences of the great classics, as Ernst Lubitch, Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen ("Singing' in the Rain"), or of young directors, as Alfonso Cuarón ("A Little Princess"), although with the personality characteristic of his author. A Spanish filmmaker that is also brilliant in the direction of his starring, all in "state of grace"; then from the Daniel Guzmán and the Verónica Sánchez (similar to "Amélie"), up to the veteran Fernando Fernán-Gómez, nothing screeches in the shining cast.

It is for this reason that the narrative gyration and the final surprise act as MIA SARAH one of the most innovative and most daring movies of that Young Spanish Cinema of which so much we are poor for a renewal of our commercial screens. Now mistake that audience -popular and intellectual public- answers favorably to the brilliant proposal of Gustavo Ron. At the moment, note his name.
7 out of 10 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed