Rated: MA 15+
Directed by: Isabel Coixet
Produced by: El Deseo, Pedro And Agustín Almodóvar
Starring: Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Ana Torrent, Carmen Machi.
For years, nice guy Peter Riordan (Timothy Spall) has been losing himself in the modest comforts of his daily life. The four ginger nut biscuits he carefully lines up to dunk in his solitary cup of tea every morning, the photograph of the sky he snaps before breakfast and the satisfaction he takes when he finds compassionate and sustainable solutions for his clientele. With his work unappreciated and made to report to a much younger man, Peter’s ethics are out of step with the slick practices and doublespeak of contemporary banking and he eventually finds himself pushed into an early retirement.
That is just the nudge Peter has needed to take up his brother’s invitation to come and stay with him in his apartment on the Mediterranean coast at Benidorm. Only there is no sign of his brother by the time Peter lands at Alicante Airport. Daniel has just vanished. At a complete loss, Peter finds himself ushered up to his brother’s flash but slightly trashy apartment, from where he sets about trying to find Daniel through the traces his brother has left behind.
As Peter is very much an archetypical outsider who spends much of his time alone, director Isabel Coixet uses a voiceover to as a way to convey Peter’s thoughts. It’s a risky technique but, in this instance, it is reasonably subtle and it does underscore how solitary Peter’s existence is. At the same time, the feeling of alienation and distance Coixet achieves is at odds with the feeling of being caught up in the moment, which makes watching films so compelling.
However, I was soon yanked back into Benidorm’s ambiance when Peter goes out for the evening and winds up at his brother’s nightclub. He arrives just as a chunky Elvis impersonator is finishing a very amateurish but moving version of ‘The King’s’ In the Ghetto. This is followed by an act put on by Daniel’s business partner, the slinky, leather-clad, prawn-head-chomping Alex, whose seductive gyrations instantly beguile Daniel, as well as holding everyone else in the audience in thrall.
Benidorm is a place that holds a strange attraction. On the surface it is a gaudy tourist resort and party town that thrives on sunny mornings and long, tropical nights, at the same time it is a place with a seamy underbelly infiltrated by the mafia and shady dealers. But Benidorm is also an outpost where the locals live their lives according to their own sense of poetry and philosophy. This, they attribute to the celebrated poet Sylvia Plath having rented a beachside cottage there in the 1950s.
As Peter spends more time prowling around the city in search of his brother, Benidorm itself gradually becomes one of the characters, with its own subtle methods of alluring and beguiling those who thought they were just passing through and even those seeking to escape.
While there might be some echoes of Citizen Kane in Peter’s quest to find his errant brother, it is not the deepest truth about Daniel that Peter uncovers, rather he finds a conduit into the workings of his own long-suppressed desires.
It Snows in Benidorm is a beautifully filmed and thoughtful drama, buoyed by a gentle humour and unexpected moments of lyricism.