The Screengrab

We've always been distrustful of the notion that "art film" must always mean "depressing slog".  For that matter, we've always been distrustful of the notion that "depressing slog" must always mean "unenjoyable film".  As Chicago author Amy Krause Rosenthal once wrote, defending her decision to avoid feel-good Hollywood fare, when she sees a movie with a bunch of rich, beautiful people who end up getting whatever they want the most, her own life seems like a failure by comparison, and she ends up being depressed -- but when she sees a movie with a bunch of miserable, unhappy people who just can't get their shit together, her own life seems pretty good by comparison, and she ends up being happy.

That said, we can't really dispute the Guardian's Catherine Shoard, who writes  -- inspired by the British opening of the mercilessly grim Austrian arthouse flick Import/Export -- that sitting through some such 'masterpieces' is the cinematic equivalent of an endurance marathon.  Will the movie be more or less depressing than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days?  Will it be more or less ugly than Rosetta?  Will it have a greater or lesser number of extremely unattractive naked people than Japon?  Shoard then sets forth a checklist of required unpleasantries for any readers contemplating their own arthouse masterpieces, including "kinky yet joyless sex",  inclement weather, feral children, beat-up mopeds, and humor that isn't funny ("a clarinet on the soundtrack tends to signal when it's time to smile").  

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Last week, we brought you news of the Spanish Film Festival in London, in which Iberian directors struggled with their nation's cinematic identity and tried to come to terms with the fact that they are operating in a market where there is little interest in or knowledge of any Spanish film not bearing the Pedro Almodóvar imprint.  The festival inspired the Guardian's Paul Julian Smith to contemplate the existence of an "Almodóvar Curse", in  which the  Volver director's success might ironically be bad news for the Spanish film industry as a whole.

Well, apparently, someone got word of the piece to the man himself (we like to think that Mr. Almodóvar is a regular Screengrab reader), andhe was inspired to fire off a response.   His response is erudite and measured, if a tad defensive-sounding; he blames the fact that the vast majority of films shown in British theatres are English-language releases, with a miniscule 1.3% of all U.K. screens being devoted to non-English-language films not just from Spain, but from all other countries combined.  "It is deeply unfair, and also rather silly, to blame me for an absence of Spanish films at UK cinemas," he says; "Interest cannot be monopolised.  It can be 'attracted', or 'generated'.  But it cannot be monopolised, because it belongs to the person interested...how could I possibly monopolise international interest; through some form of mass hypnosis?"

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