Spanish Film Festival: More reviews

On the third day of the film festival, my second, I got to watch two totally different films both set in the present unlike 13 roses. They were Fermat’s Room and Seven Billiard Tables. It was fun watching two thoroughly yet differently entertaining films back to back

Fermat’s Room (La Habitación de Fermat)

The movie,as everybody else would mention in their review, starts with the line, “If you dont know what prime numbers are, you can stop watching this movie”. Quite a bold statement and kinda nonsensical too because the movie is not laden with heavy mathematical jargon or thesis. It is just a thriller woven around a few mathematicians. 4 mathematicians who donot know each other are invited to a secret meeting to solve an mathematical puzzle and each of them is given a pseudonym for use during the meeting. They are asked to drive to a certain place and find a Car with a pda telling them where to go. After a while they find themselves in a room at a warehouse. Their host Fermat has to leave due to some circumstance and they are left to solve certain problems the pda gives them. The trick here is they are solving for their lives. Each time they arent able to give the answer within a time frame the room begins to shrink. What they do from then on forms the rest of the story. 
The movie is a standard thriller wearing a mathematician’s moustache. It is very easy to follow and has all the cliches associated with a movie of this sort. A pretty girl, a scape goat, an ambitious young man, some one out for revenge etc. That doesnt mean I discredit the way it is made. The premise is decent and the performances are pretty good. It would make a nice movie to watch on a weekend night.

7 Billiard tables (Siete mesas de billar francés)

7 billiard tables was by far my favorite movie of the lot during the Spanish film festival. It starts out more or less the same way as Volver (starring Penelope Cruz) did and plays out in the same way showing a strong single woman who generally lives in the city having to go back to her hometown and family and in doing so reviving and enthusing spirit into the lives of people around her.
This is the story of Angela who gets a double blow of the death of her father and the truth about her cheating and conman of a husband. She goes back to her roots and tries to resurrect her father’s billiards hall. This is the also the story of how a man has wrecked the lives of three other people, living selfishly and always serving his own interests at the cost of others’. This man, ie Angela’s father is not even alive during the movie and yet holds an iron grip over the people involved. As the movie goes on they try and let go. Every character is well carved and thoroughly examined and each person in the story is very likeable.
The movie sails through the story and the viewer is pulled into the life of a middle class spanish household. Unlike the usual dramas the movie has several light moments and I had a great time smiling and laughing at the situational humour spread through out the film. The end kind of fizzes out but overall the movie is delightful to watch. I would love to see more movies like these but yeah that is because I am a sucker for dramas on urban middle class with severe issues.