Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 28/9/2018

Among the titles in the main programme is Andrea Weiss's Bones of Contention, which is focuses on the oppression of lesbians and gays during the Franco era. Claimed to be the first non-fiction feature to explore the theme of historical memory in Spain, the documentary includes encounters with families of the 120,000 Civil War victims who were buried in unmarked graves, among them the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was killed by a fascist firing squad in the first few weeks of the conflict. 

Forming part of the Basque Window slate, Ana Murugarren's dark satire, La Higuera de los Bastardos/The Bastards' Fig Tree, is also set during the Spanish Civil War and centres on the efforts of Falangist soldier Karra Elejalde to eliminate undesirables and opponents of El Caudillo. However, Elejalde becomes so convinced that the 10 year-old son of one of his victims will hunt him down after he turns 16 that he becomes a hermit. But when a fig tree sprouts on his father's grave, Elejalde acquires a cult following whose devotion he hopes will expunge his guilt. 

Igor Legarreta considers the confluence of the Civil War legacy and the rise of the Basque separatist group ETA in Cuandos dejes de Quererme/When You No Longer Love Me. When she receives news about the remains of her biological father, Flor Torrente travels from Buenos Aires to a forest near Durango with her widowed stepfather, Eduardo Blanco. Torrente has never forgiven Eneko Sagardoy for abandoning her and her mother back in 1968. But, as insurance adjuster Miki Esparbé explains, the truth is not quite so simple, as he conducts a murder investigation that uncovers all manner of secrets, contradictions and lies. 

Completing this part of the programme is José Antonio Blanco and Ángel Parra's Soul, which contrasts the achievements of Michelin triple star holders, Eneko Atxa, the Basque owner of the Azurmendi restaurant in Biscay, and his Japanese counterpart, Jiro Ono from Sukiyabashi Jiro in the Ginza district of Tokyo, who was profiled in David Gelb's 2011 acutality, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. 

Another documentary portrait can be found in the Catalan Window segment, as the debuting Lucija Stojevic recalls the career of flamenco dancer Antonia Santiago Amador in La Chana. Feted by the likes of Salvador Dalí and Mikhail Baryshnikov, La Chana was invited to co-star alongside Peter Sellers in Robert Parrish's comedy, The Bobo (1967). But her abusive and controlling husband of 18 years turned down other Hollywood offers and kept his wife on a short string, as he forced her into early retirement. But, as this assessment of the status of women within Gypsy culture reveals, La Chana returned triumphantly to the spotlight before settling down with her second husband, fishmonger Felix Comas.  

The scene shifts to the island of Minorca in 1914 for Marc Recha's La Vida Libre/The Free Life, which was filmed on a modest budget in just 15 days and draws on the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Albert Camus, Josep Pla and William Faulkner. At the heart of the story are Mariona Gomila and Macià Arguimbau, who are staying with grandfather Miquel Gelabert while their mother works in Africa. However, their imaginations are fired by the yarns told them by Sergi López, a drifter who lives among the rocks by the sea, and by their glimpses of their mysterious neighbour, Nuria Prims.

Contrasting starkly with his study of childhood innocence is Eduardo Chapero Jackson's Tócate, which draws on a book of erotic stories on the theme of what William Shakespeare called `traffic with thyself alone'. Photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe, this sophisticated portmanteau features such prominent performers as Álex García, Thaïs Blume, Leonor Watling, Alberto Ammann, Verónica Echegui, Marta Fernández, Màxim Huerta and Leticia Dolera. 

In 2014, Carlos Marques-Marcet won the Goya for Best New Director for 10,000 Km, which followed the efforts of David Verdaguer and Natalia Tena to sustain their relationship after she moves to Los Angeles and leaves him at the other end of a Skype link in Barcelona. While it began promisingly, the storyline became increasingly convoluted as it went along and Marques-Marcet allows the same thing to happen in his sophomore outing, Anchor and Hope. Reuniting Tena and Verdaguer and relocating the action to London, this meticulously made, but frustratingly underwhelming dramedy bears an unmissable resemblance to Daisy Aitkens's You, Me and Him (2017), in which the loving relationship between lesbians Lucy Punch and Faye Marsay enters choppy waters after the latter gets pregnant during a one-night stand with lusty neighbour, David Tennant. 

Seemingly content with their life on a narrow boat on the Regent's Canal, Oona Chaplin and Natalia Tena broach the subject of parenthood after the death of their cat, Chorizo. However, while Chaplin is committed to the prospect of becoming a mother and undergoes artificial insemination using sperm donated by David Verdaguer, Tena's visiting friend from Barcelona, it soon becomes clear that Tena would rather things stay as they are. But she comes to regret her careless words when Chaplin miscarries. 

Beautifully played by Chaplin and Tena, this determinedly alternative romcom is engaging without ever being particularly enthralling. In adapting feminist activist Maria Llopis's novel, Maternidades Subversivas, Marques-Marcet and debuting co-writer Jules Nurrish dot the action with numerous dead-end scenes populated by non-returning characters that clutter proceedings without giving the audience any fresh insight into the protagonists. Even the scenes involving dotty widow Geraldine Chaplin (acting opposite her own daughter for the first time) feel shoehorned in, as too much emphasis is placed on her hippy-dippiness and not enough on how she feels about her daughter's relationship and the prospect of becoming a grandmother to a stranger's baby. 

Despite his lively performance, Verdaguer stubbornly remains an outsider, whose ability to drop everything and stay in London goes as unexplained as his friendship with Tena and his readiness to help out when he senses that she isn't keen to become a parent. Yet, even though he appears to be a shameless womaniser, he must be sufficiently close to Chaplin for her to accept him as a potential father without a moment's hesitation. Such gaps in the narrative and glitches in its logic prevent the viewer from buying fully into the scenario, while the ease with which Chaplin and Tena fall apart and then patch things up feels equally specious. 

Cinematographer Dagmar Weaver-Madsen makes the most of the looming buildings on the quayside and the duck weed on the placid water, while production designer Tim Dickel ensures that the narrow boat seems both cosy and cramped in order to reflect how the lovers variously feel about their relationship. But Marques-Marcet overdoes the use of tunnels, bridges and locks, while underselling the legal need (and the possible recessional necessity) to keep moving along the canal and the impact that this has on the couple finding jobs and putting down roots. Indeed, this lack of a socio-economic anchor means that the picture often drifts. But it scarcely helps that it's so similar in so many ways to Daisy Aitkens's earlier outing.

Another Catalan exile takes centre stage in Elena Martín's Júlia Ist, which contains echoes of Carlos Marques-Marcet's 10,000 Km. Drawing on her own experiences, Martín stars as a 21 year-old architecture student who accepts a placement on an Erasmus exchange programme to spend some time in Berlin. Having never strayed far from Barcelona before, the short-sighted Martín feels out of place in her new surroundings and seeks solace in Skype chats with her longtime boyfriend, Orial Puig. However, it gradually becomes clear that Martín and Puig are drifting apart and she realises that she will have to embrace the opportunities the German capital offers. 

Letting down her hair and removing her glasses might seem a slightly clichéd way for a wallflower to announce her arrival on a new scene. But such is Martín's natural screen presence that she enlists the audience's support, as she starts contributing in class, exploring the city and socialising with her fellow students. Among them is Jakob D'Aprile, who seems to understand her better than Puig and they tumble into bed together. 

This isn't a formulaic rite of passage, however, even though it bears similarities to Las Amigas de Ágata (2015), in which Martín worked with the debuting directorial quartet of Alba Cros, Laia Alabart, Marta Verheyen and Laura Rius. She has clearly been influenced by this project and the freewheeling style of Lena Dunham, as the performances have a spontaneity that is complemented by cinematographer Pol Rebaque's atmospheric views of Berlin landmarks and hideaways. Rebaque also receives a writing credit along with Martín, María Castellvi and producer Marta Cruañas. But, while this feels much more intimate than Cédric Klapisch's ensemble comedy, Pot Luck (2002) - which took Romain Duris to Barcelona on a language scheme - it's no less ambitious or perceptive in its discussion of clashing cultures, emerging identity and the attractions and temptations of urban living.  

The principals in Eva Vila Purtí's Penèlope may be at the other end of their life stories, but their relationship proves even more engrossing in this lyrical example of what has become known as Slow Cinema. Set in the remote Catalan village of Santa María D'Oló, this study in patient endurance has been loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey, as it reimagines Penelope's wait for Ulysses to return to Ithaca. But when Ramón Clotet Sala finally makes his way back to his birthplace, he has changed so much that nobody recognises him, even nonagenarian seamstress Carme Tarté Viladrell, who has spent the intervening decades mending clothes for her neighbours and counting the days. 

A hybrid of the docudrama and the film essay, this makes for mesmerising viewing, as Julián Elizalde's camera alights on the mountain scenery and the small details in Carme's humble home. Amanda Villavieja's sound design is also hypnotic, as it uses the sound of ticking clocks, radio broadcasts, tinkling bells, the natural world and the whirring of Carme's sewing machine to convey both the tranquility of her surroundings and the interminable duration of her vigil. As non-performers, Carme and Ramón have an authenticity and sincerity that chimes in perfectly with Vila and editor Diana Toucedo's measured pacing and Juan Sánchez Cuti's delicate score.

Faint echoes of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1969) can be detected, along with allusions to Víctor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and El Sur (1983). But Vila emerges as a distinctive voice with this follow-up to the acclaimed documentary, Bajarí (2013), which evokes memories of Juan Martin and Sinforosa Colomer, the married couple profiled in David Beltrán and Angello Faccini's short, The Last Two (2015), who remained in the hamlet of La Estrella for over 45 years after their neighbours had left. 

Santiago Segura is best known at home for his self-directed performances as José Luis Torrente in the five-part series (1998-2014) about a maverick crime-fighter that is currently the most commercially successful franchise in Spanish screen history. However, Segura also had a hit with Sin Rodeos/Empowered, a remake of Chilean Nicolás López's Paz Bascuñán comedy, San Filtro/No Filter (2016), which out-grossed Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the domestic box office and was also remade in Mexico and Argentina before its maker became embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal during the summer. 

Thirty-nine year-old Madrid-based publicist Maribel Verdú is at the end of her tether. She is taken for granted by her partner, Argentinian painter Rafael Spregelburd, and his spoilt son, Daniel Medina, while best friend Cristina Castaño and cat-loving sister Toni Acosta are too preoccupied with their own problems to sympathise with the fact that Verdú's boss, David Guapo, has just placed her under the supervision of 20 year-old Cristina Pedroche, whose sole qualification for the job is that she's a social media wizard with a gazillion followers. 

Desperate to regain a modicum of control over her life, Verdú consults an Indian guru (played, somewhat dubiously, by Seguera himself). However, the elixir he gives her removes her inhibitions to such an extent that every word Verdú utters is the unvarnished and often unsubtle truth. Suddenly, she has a whole set of new problems. 

Although she's been acting in films since 1986, Verdú will still probably be best known to British audiences for her work in Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También (2001) and Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006). However, she rises to the challenge of a role that would probably have been better suited to a livewire like Candela Peña. Indeed, Verdú has a ball in letting rip and she is ably abetted by a supporting cast that lets her have the majority of the laughs. Acosta (who could also have carried off the lead with aplomb) and Pedroche are particularly amusing, as the simpering sibling and the air-headed trendsetter. 

In many ways, this is a retool of Tom Shadyac's Jim Carrey vehicle, Liar Liar (1997), and Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson's similarly themed The Invention of Lying (2009). But, for once, the emphasis is on a female protagonist and Segura and co-scenarists Marta González de Vega and Benigno López put plenty of satirical spin on the sometimes broad comedy. The production values are solid rather than inspired, but they ensure the focus remains on Verdú and the vulnerability that underlies her new-found frankness.  

Finally, another standout performance dominates Manuel Martín Cuenca's El Autor/The Motive, an adaptation of a bestselling novel by Javier Cerca that earned Javier Gutiérrez the Goya Award for Best Actor. Anyone impressed by Glenn Close's performance as Nobel laureate Jonathan Pryce's long-suffering spouse in Björn Runge's The Wife should seek out this wittily insightful dissertation on the creative process. However, given that Cuenca's previous films were respectively about paedophilia (The Weakness of the Bolshevik, 2003), incest (Half of Oscar, 2010) and cannibalism (Cannibal, 2013), this can seem a little tame by comparison. 

Fortysomething Javier Gutiérrez is bored with his job as a notary with a Seville law firm. He is also envious of wife Maria Leon's literary success with a tome entitled Men's Secrets. So, when he catches her in flagrante with her lover and is invited to explore other avenues by his boss, Gutiérrez moves out in order to pen his magnum opus. However, no sooner is he ensconced in his new flat than he starts taking creative writing teacher Antonio de la Torre's advice to write about what he knows a bit too literally. 

Deciding his own life is too humdrum to inspire a blockbuster, Gutiérrez begins eavesdropping on his Mexican immigrant neighbours for ideas. But, when snooping on Adriana Paz and Tenoch Huerta produces only modest results, he turns puppetmaster and starts manipulating them into page-turning situations. He also latches on to grouchy Felangist Rafael Tellez, who has a small fortune stashed away on his premises, and even embarks on an affair with comely older landlady Adelfa Calvo to pick up any morsels of gossip that could spice up his story. 

Yet, while his prose improves immeasurably, Gutiérrez is far from satisfied and lies to Huerta about his resident status in a bid to goad him into committing a crime. However, he most comes to rue his decision to blow hot and cold with Calvo, who refuses to be ignored.

One can easily imagine this cynically lurid comedy being badly remade in Hollywood, with the emphasis being placed on the anti-hero's machinations rather than on the socio-cultural satire. But Cuenca and co-scenarist Alejandro Hernández don't always make the most of their material, as Cuenca seems content to linger on Gutiérrez's marvellously malignant performance when he might have read a little more between the lines. This is a shame, as Calvo and De la Torre also shine, as the spurned landlady and the foul-mouthed, short-fused tutor. 

Despite the number of films centred on writers, the creative process itself is far from cinematic and Cuenca and editor Ángel Hernández Zoido often struggle to inject any pace into the proceedings. Pau Esteve Birba's photography and Sonia Nolla's production design are also rather perfunctory. although there's a melancholic acuity about the sentimental clutter stuffed into Tellez and Calvo's dwellings. Yet, while this ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, it still amuses and has incisive things to say about life and art, faith and fascism, and love and lust. And the performances are spot on.