★ 2 / 10
Considering that it was directed by the renowned
Dave S
Considering that it was directed by the renowned Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, Deprisa, Deprisa is a major disappointment. When a naïve coffeeshop employee…
Considering that it was directed by the renowned Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, Deprisa, Deprisa is a major disappointment. When a naïve coffeeshop employee (Berta Socuellamos) falls for a career criminal (Jose Antonio Valdelomar), she is soon immersed in his gang and a life of crime. Nothing that happens in the movie is even remotely believable, including the relationship between the two main characters and her rapid transition into a gun-toting bank robber. The dialogue feels unnatural throughout, most shots are horribly framed, characters spend most of their time laughing at things that aren’t remotely funny, and the editing is brutal from start to finish as most shots run longer than necessary and many scenes serve no purpose. By the time the predictable finale rolls around, it’s hard to believe that any viewer could care less as to what happens to any of the characters.
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★ 6 / 10
Film Theory
boblipton
Jose Antonio Valdelomar Gonzales asks Berta Socuellamos to be his girlfriend. She agrees. She integrates quickly into his gang of bank robbers. For a while…
Jose Antonio Valdelomar Gonzales asks Berta Socuellamos to be his girlfriend. She agrees. She integrates quickly into his gang of bank robbers. For a while, things go very nicely. They make large scores, leave no important clues, and she is saving money to buy an apartment for them. Then a job goes wrong.The most notable thing about this movie by Carlos Saura is that the six top roles -- the men in the gang, Srta Socuellamos, and another member's girl friend -- were found in casting calls for non-professional actors. Only one of them appeared on the screen again. Gonzales died 11 years later of a drug overdose in prison, where he was arrested for bank robbery. Rumors abound about the production, most of them scurrilous. I won't take Saura too much to task for this sort of casting; from Academician "theory of types" to Robert Bresson, to Eastwood in THE 15:17 TO PARIS, directors have undertaken to cast non-professional in key roles, sometimes under elaborate theories, sometimes because you admire what they did, and sometimes because, well, why hire some one to play Audie Murphy, when he's on the payroll as an actor?Saura does get good performances out of them, by directing them to maintain low affects and keeping their lines simple. He crafts believable situations, tense bank robberies, and so forth. So it's a very well made movie. If anything, it demonstrates another Academician theory, the Kuelshov Effect, which is that acting is largely irrelevant to acting; the audience infers the thoughts of the actors by how the shots are edited together.
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