Anatomy of a Scene: Los lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

Anatomy of a scene: La madre muerta (00:21:12-00:23:11)

Ismael has one of those days where everything goes wrong

This is the start of what will be an occasional feature on the blog. I won't do it for every film I look at, but some films have a scene that just perfectly captures the sensibility and / or themes of the film as a whole. In the case of La madre muerta, I could have chosen the ‘Aguadilu’ scene because that is also a good illustration of the tone of the film and the fine line that it walks between humour and uneasiness. However I’ve chosen this one because a) it is darkly funny, and b) it is a brilliant set piece. Plus it occurs only twenty minutes into the film, so I can’t be accused of spoiling the plot. Juanma Bajo Ulloa considers it to be one of the best sequences in the film because of how it creates a sensation of fear (something is going to happen to the grandmother, but we don’t know exactly what) and combines both suspense and absurd humour.

The story so far: The prologue of the film sees Ismael (Karra Elejalde) shoot and kill a woman who disturbs him during a burglary, and ends with him pointing his shotgun at the head of the woman’s small daughter. Fifteen years later, Ismael spots the girl (Leire -now grown up and played by Ana Álvarez) in the street with her grandmother. Despite the fact that she is mute, and has the mental age of a three-year-old, he becomes convinced that she recognises him and could identify him to the police. As a result, Ismael announces to his girlfriend that he plans to kidnap and kill Leire. In the lead up to this scene, we have seen Ismael tail Leire and her grandmother as they make their way home from the clinic where Leire spends her days. He casually follows them into their apartment block, and then it cuts to….