Bus driver's quiet rebellion will have you cheering for the underdog

The Age

7 days ago

EL 47
Rated M.
110 minutes
In cinemas July 10
★★★★
When Franco, the Spanish dictator, died in 1975 after decades of fascist rule, the effect on the country's film industry was immediate.
Forty years of pent-up grievances and frustrations exploded on to the screen in a display of colour, movement and melodrama. And it shows no signs of dissipating. I'm happy to say restraint still plays a minor role in the language of Spanish cinema.
But it can get serious. The director, Marcel Barrena, who favours social realism drawn from true stories, looks back to the Franco era in the opening scenes of EL 47.
It's 1958 and a community of working-class people who have been forced from Extremadura and Andalusia by rising real estate prices and rapacious landlords, have bought small plots of land in Torre Baro, a hilly area on the outskirts of Barcelona. The terms of this arrangement are unbelievably harsh. They can build shanties if they can get them up in a single night. If their roofs are not on by dawn, the Civil Guard will come in and tear them down.
Against all the odds, they manage this with a collective effort, getting together to erect one house at a time. And 20 years later, most of these people are still in Torre Baro, having made the shacks into relatively comfortable houses. But the power and water supply is unreliable, the roads are unpaved and potholed and there's no public transport.
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Manolo Vital and his wife, Carmen (Clara Segura), a former nun who left her order to marry him, are unofficial community leaders. She teaches the children to read and write, while he's the one who pushed everybody to work together on their houses in establishing the settlement.
He's played by Eduard Fernández, one of Spain's big stars, but you'd hardly know it. Fernández has poured himself into the portrait of an ordinary man made remarkable by having to spend much of his life dealing with extraordinary circumstances.