Since I didn't have much sleep last Friday night, I looked for a movie to get me dreaming (in the real sense). Finally I decided to alternate a bit to the usual "sleeping pill" which are old Hong-Kong movies, and I stopped on a romantic comedy (what was in my mind?..). That's how I got to "Belle Epoque". Big mistake...
I don't have much time for writing, so let's make this quick. We're talking about a Spanish movie since more than 20 years ago. The period of the action: more than 80 years ago. A young deserter from the Spanish army, traveling from town to town in the early '30s, stops one night in a quiet village, where he finds shelter in the big house of a nice old man. The old man brings the young fellow to the train station the next morning, to say "adios" and also to pick up his visiting daughters, just arrived from the capital. Four of them. Three unmarried and one widow. Guess what: the boy loses the train. What happens next ... I said I don't have time to write :)
There isn't any exact comparison that comes to my mind now that perfectly defines what I've watched in "Belle Epoque". There's something between Alexander Payne's maximum usage of the characteristics of the location setting (= the rural Spain in this case), and a latino version of Woddy Allen. In any case, this is not a movie to put you to sleep, despite the calm that it has, the comforting tone and the lighthearted view on life .. which creates an ironic contrast with the tragic period of the Spanish civil war that follows, slowly getting shape.
Rating: 3 out of 5 (because the ending disappointed me a bit... otherwise it would've been a 4)
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