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DIRECTED BY: Julio Medem

FEATURING: Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Silke, Karra Elejalde, Nancho Novo

PLOT: A man fresh out of a mental hospital takes a job fumigating a scourge of wood lice in the countryside in Spanish wine country, where he finds himself irresistibly drawn to both a comely young wife who is neglected by her farmer husband and a spirited wild child who is being kept as a mistress by that same husband.

COMMENTS: Ángel is cool as a cucumber. At least, Ángel as portrayed by Carmelo Gómez is cool as a cucumber. Looking like Judd Nelson at the moment when he might have been the sexiest member of the Brat Pack, he’s utterly unflappable, rolling into town in his exterminator truck and telling the residents how he will wipe out the wood lice that have been making their wine taste “earthy.” Is earthy bad? You wouldn’t think so to watch Ángel take a taste. On paper, he ought to be the most unsettled man in Spain: mental stability in question, with a trip to a sanitarium that everyone knows about, his life narrated by an alter ego that constantly reminds him of his mortality, reduced to killing bugs in a dusty nowheresville, and deeply attracted to two beautiful but distinctly opposite women, each of whom is being kept by a possessive and violent man. Ángel ought to be up to his ears in anxiety. But there he sits, laid back like the cool philosophy professor, taking things as they come, man. It’s fascinating.

Tierra is notably odd for being a character study about a character with very little character. Ángel keeps finding himself in extreme circumstances: encountering a lightning strike victim, arousing the ire of a full Roma encampment, accidentally (?) shooting a rival during a town-wide hunt for wild boars. In every case he is preternaturally calm, taking in the circumstances with the passive contentment of a saint—which the film suggests he may be, hinting more than once that he has had a life-changing experience. On the other hand, we’re also told that his stint in the mental ward was due to an “overactive imagination.” Whatever Ángel’s truth may be, Gómez plays it close to the vest.

It would be completely reasonable for Ángel to be torn between the two young women he meets in town. Ángela, the fetching young mom with a name that screams out how in sync the two must be, is played by Suárez with an aching need that she hopes the newcomer can fill. Meanwhile, Silke’s sexpot Mari always seems to be bending over a pool table with painted-on jeans and a come-hither stare, but she is just as desperate for the change in circumstances that Ángel could provide. But what exactly Ángel has to offer to either of them, beyond escape from the status quo, is not entirely clear. Medem manufactures some suspense over whether he will end up with the sweet mom or the hot chick, but neither the tension nor the choice is altogether convincing. 

In a review of another Medem film, a critic observed that “there’s the sense that he’s more interested in his ideas than in his people.” That suspicion permeates Tierra. The barrenness of the Spanish landscape captivates, creating an almost apocalyptic feel, and an outsider with a supernatural connection would absolutely fill a narrative void. But Medem’s affection for Ángel is such that his protagonist does nothing but win, which means that even the ideas aren’t all that compelling. Wherever Ángel and his new companion are headed, there is little reason to worry about them. No wonder he’s so cool all the time. He never has to feel the heat.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Like Medem’s two most recent films, ‘Tierra’ (Spanish for ‘Earth’) is an intricately structured, densely allusive affair. Its central figure is an itinerant exterminator named Angel (Carmelo Gomez) — a nod in the direction of Luis Bunuel’s ‘The Exterminating Angel,’ you might think, but only in the sense that both films draw water from the same surrealist pond… Despite its affectations, however — thanks mainly to a stunning ocher cinematographic palette, rock-solid acting and a story that’s as robustly sensual as it is otherworldly — ‘Tierra’ keeps its two feet (two of everything, in fact) firmly grounded on this Earth.” – Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post (repertory review)

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Tierra

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