La Comunidad

This is one of the best Spanish films over the last 5 years. It is funny and tense at the same time. All the characters are fun and Carmen Maura turns in another great performance. Based on the notion of a building's "community," (or bldg association) this film picks fun at the Spanish culture of nosy neighbors and apartment living. Director de la Iglesias also pays his respects to Hitchcock in a couple of scenes.

What people won't do for money.......

Carmen Maura plays a real estate agent who moves in for one place to the next, apartments that she should rent, but lives in. One day, the upstairs neighbor is found day, and while his dead body is carried away, his wallet drops. In it is a checkered map that leads to the discovery of several money bags. Neighbors discover this, and soon enough, they fight over them.

Good cast, good directing, but certainly not the comedy of the year. A very unoriginal script.

This movie IS a rather horrible comedy, close to a horror film in fact, but still quite enjoyable.

Alex de la Iglesia has forged a career out of making films that depict extremes (in many cases), and for my money his best is Perdita Durango (aka Dance with the Devil) with Rosie Perez and, in a somewhat early role, Javier Bardem speaking pretty broken English but insanely great.

This film, La Comunidad, is kind of fun to watch and does, to some extent, capture some of the director's spirit of the extremes, but is not as intense or riveting or downright fun to watch as Perdita Durango. It does feature Carmen Maura and she is, hands down, the star of the show--in fact, she's really good. It's not that the other actors aren't as good as she is--all of them do a fine job. It's really that the script is just not as powerful as it might have been. It does hold your interest but doesn't really grab it.

The story finds our heroine, Julia (Maura), a real estate agent, "usurping" one of her primo apartments for her own use with Ricardo, her husband/boyfriend (which is it? I dunno), and subsequently stumbling across the dead body of a really old guy. Later, having found a "clue", she puts two and two together, returns to the apartment of the old dead guy (who's now been carted off for burial), and finds a huge amount of cash.

The title refers to all the people who live in the building who know about the cash but could never find it and who realize that this new "neighbor" has found it. The black comedy hijinks that ensue form the substance of the film.

One of the problems here is that there could have been a lot more sexual tension which would have done much to sharpen the edge of the film. But this component of the film just kind of fizzles. We also don't really see why Julia (Maura) is so attracted to her husband (or boyfriend; we're never really sure which one), Ricardo. Sexual tension is kind of toyed with in the film--Julia is definitely attracted to one of the neighbors--but never really taken advantage of, so to speak; the director teases us with it, then doesn't really follow up with it. This could have really made the film a whole lot punchier than it is.

The resolution is OK, but not great. There are a few pretty funny lines here and there and that helps. This is not really a bad film. It's just not as good as it definitely could have been.

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