Little Ashes (Paul Morrison, 2008)
Little Ashes chronicles the early years of Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran), Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson) and Luis Bunel (Matthew McNulty) as they live together at the university hostel, the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. Forming a contemporary group of young artists and free thinkers they become firm friends and whilst Bunel travels to Paris the relationship between Lorca and Dali becomes stronger. Unable to deal with his feelings towards Lorca, Dali flees to Paris where he makes Un Chien Andalou with Bunel. Having become a renowned writer and member of the Generation ’27 Lorca enjoys his own successes in Spain. Years later Dali returns to Madrid with his wife and muse Gala to attempt to talk Lorca into working with him again, but fails. In 1936 at the start of the Spanish civil war Lorca returns home to Granada and is soon arrested and shot by Nationalist militia.
Guaranteed to get historians knickers in a twist, this film is best watched with a pinch of salt, and the words “inspired by true events” are of the utmost importance. Although Dali shrouded his relationship with Lorca in mystery he is quoted as having said, “He was homosexual, as everyone knows, and madly in love with me,” according to Alain Bosquet's 1969 Conversations with Dali. “He tried to screw me twice... I was extremely annoyed, because I wasn't homosexual, and I wasn't interested in giving in. Besides, it hurts. So nothing came of it. But I felt awfully flattered vis-à-vis the prestige. Deep down I felt that he was a great poet and that I owe him a tiny bit of the Divine Dali's asshole.” Here in the film there is a lot more to their relationship, and although they fail to have sex Dali is show to engage in other forms of intimacy with Lorca and to have confused, but undoubtedly romantic feelings towards him.
As with films like Frida I found it slightly distracting to have Spanish speaking characters speaking English with a Spanish accent. I had been skeptical of this before seeing the film and had hoped that they would manage to get around it somehow, but ultimately it struck me as an odd decision on the filmmakers part, particularly as it is a Spanish/UK co-production and the majority of the cast are Spanish. In the case of Frida it could have been for commercial reasons, but here it seems unnecessary as I doubt it will gain mainstream success due to its subject matter, and the art house crowd may be put off by its historical inaccuracy and dodgy accents.
On the whole though the acting is good, Beltran, Pattinson and Marina Gatell as Margarita were particularly good in their roles. I felt that more time could have been spent developing the characters, especially Dali, as I didn’t feel that I particularly learnt anything about any of them and by the end I didn’t have any emotional involvement with the characters and their actions were often poorly explained. Having said that, the film still felt slow and it didn’t entirely hold my attention. The time line seemed confused as it moved quickly through a period of almost 16 years the plot also assumed prior knowledge of the period and characters from the audience.
The filmmaking is competent and over all it wasn’t terrible, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping to. There is a film to be made about this period of time, the subject matter is interesting and has potential to be compelling, but I found this utterly forgettable.
I’d give it 5/10.
