Sound of the Sea features a strong and complex female character, which once more fits right into the tendency towards a feminist discourse; it tackles issues which could be tentatively called as female, profiles interesting and multi-layered female characters and recounts events from the dominantly female perspective, which are all some of the constant features of Spanish films



We are paying tribute to the Spanish director and writer Josep Joan Bigas Luna, who died in April 2013 after a long and severe illness, by screening his erotic-romantic drama Sound of the Sea, which was nominated for two Goya awards in 2001. This Catalonian artist often adapted provocative stories and was no stranger to controversies. In 1992, according to the actor’s own words, he launched Javier Bardem’s stellar career, with his well-known film Ham, Ham, winner of a Silver Lion. In collaboration with Rafael Azcona, among other things, the co-writer of the Cannes-winner Cousin Angelica by Carlos Saura and the great National Hunt by Luis García Berlanga, in an interesting and a relatively successful way, Luna turned Manuel Vicente's novel Sound of the Sea into a successful film. The story of a young English teacher, Ulises, arrives to a small coastal town and begins a relationship with Martina, the attractive daughter of the owner of a local restaurant. Soon after their wedding and the birth of their child, he vanishes at sea, and she is forced to accept a marriage proposal from the wealthy local businessman Sierra. Luna directed the film very confidently and suggestively, with a focus on striking visual and artistic quality and as well as on atmospheric and poetic mood and spirited performances of actors for whose characters he did not show much empathy and compassion. Both Manuel Vicent and Luna borrow their motives from Greek mythology, not only for the main character’s name and quotations from Virgil's "Aeneid" which function as announcements of future events. The protagonists are also real people with flaws whose actions are guided by corporeality, passion and egoism. In terms of acting, the beautiful Leonor Watling stands out, known to us from Almodóvar's Talk to her and the existential romantic drama My Life Without Me by her compatriot Isabel Coixet.

This film by Luna features a strong and complex female character, which once more fits right into the tendency towards a feminist discourse; it tackles issues which could be tentatively called as female, profiles interesting and multi-layered female characters and recounts events from the dominantly female perspective, which are all some of the constant features of Spanish films. Like his fellow countrymen Carlos Saura, Victor Erice, Julio Médem, Fernando Trueba and even Álex de la Iglesia, Luna’s films have a more or less clear and defined genre, deal with issues of sex, gender and sexual relationships, which he often analyzes from, if not a pronouncedly feminine, then at least from an equal point of view. (Josip Grozdanić)