La Soledad (Spanish for ‘solitude') is a slow-moving quasi-documentary film which addresses its titular theme through the lives of various interweaved characters, a little like a slow-moving, more prosaic Tales of the City. The city here is Madrid, and the two main foci Adela, a single mum who moves to the city to pursue a new life away from the energy-draining father of her child, and Antonia, the mother of a family of three daughters scrabbling over inheritance before she has popped her clogs. The split-screen effect, so often used for comedy or drama, is interestingly used here simply to portray different viewpoints in a plot without action except a terrorist bomb whose after-effects rather than actual carnage are portrayed. Studiously pallid, beautifully acted and emotionally sincere, this no-frills slice of Spanish life has a lot going for it, but be prepared for the long-haul as it doesn't offer any relief, comic or otherwise. Director Jaime Rosales was partly funded by the Cinéfondation du Festival de Cannes after success in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in 2003 with Les Heures du Jour. AC
(In Spanish, French subtitles)