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INTACTO
6/10
 aka
Intact : Spain 2001 : Juan Carlos Fresnadillo : 108 mins
Fresnadillo’s
debut feature is a wildly ambitious attempt to blend the worlds of Jose
Luis Borges and David Mamet: in the alternative universe of Intacto,
luck is a commodity which can be absorbed and accumulated by especially
‘fortunate’ individuals such as Holocaust survivor Samuel (Max Von Sydow).
When his long-time protégé Federico (Eusebio Poncela) offends his mentor,
the old man steals his student’s ‘stock’ of luck. Seven years later, Federico
burns for revenge – which means finding an individual even luckier than
Samuel. Tomas (Leonardo Sbaraglia) seems ideal, after walking away the
sole survivor of a plane-crash. But the wayward kid proves a less than
perfect pupil…
The story gets
only more complicated from here – occasionally even Fresnadillo and his
co-writer Andres Koppel don’t seem sure about how everything fits together.
And Sam’s concentration-camp experiences, so movingly recalled by Von
Sydow in a lengthy monologue, sit rather tastelessly alongside the script’s
more gimmicky aspects. But even if it doesn’t quite come off – and falls
a long way short of the coincidentally-similar Unbreakable
- there are some remarkable ideas and images here: any film featuring
a huge, phosphorescent, treacle-hunting winged insect is pretty hard to
resist.
19th
March, 2003
(seen 15th August 2002, UGC Edinburgh - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
For the longer,
in depth version of this review click here.
For and interview
with the director Juan-Carlos Fresnadillo
click here.
For all the
reviews from the 2002 Edinburgh Film Festival
click here.
by Neil
Young
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