New Cinema From Spain
Film
Chaotic Ana [IMDb]
7:20 pm
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Remis Auditorium

Chaotic Ana by Julio Medem (Spain, 2007, 114 min.). Another highly ambitious and provocative film by veteran director Julio Medem (Vacas, and Sex and Lucia). Ana is a beautiful eighteen-year-old free-spirit living in Ibiza who pours her passion for life into her naive paintings. When a cosmopolitan patron of the arts invites Ana to explore her work further by moving to Madrid, she embarks on a physical and emotional journey to uncover, through hypnosis, her past lives that crossed centuries of remote myths, which challenges Ana to break the chain of ancestral violence that lingers in her chaotic soul. “Expect the unexpected in his tale about an artist exercising pure, life-affirming creative freedom...I find myself, once again, captivated in Medem’s web” (Diana Sanchez, Toronto International Film Festival). Discussion with director follows June 19 screening.

Director Julio Medem’s Official Website

This is a well-crafted film, and I enjoyed a lot of it, though some of the ideas about feminine and masculine rub me the wrong way and the ending is somewhat uncomfortable.