Hivos Tiger Awards Competition screening - review - STELLA CADENTE (Falling Star) by Luis Minarro

Not many will know that an Italian was once King of Spain. For approximately two years before the Spanish republic – which also lasted a similar amount of time – Amadeo van Savoy theoretically ruled Spain but was really restrained to his castle partially because of die-hard opposition from virtually everyone in the country but also due to his stubbornness that prevented him to leave.

 

For long-time producer Luis Minarro, stepping behind the camera for the first time as a director in his first fiction feature effort Stella Cadente, this is also a time span that can be used to his advantage, and shaped into an exploit of extravagance and lustful deadpan decadence. Costumes and sets, in fact, lend themselves so well to flamboyance – as we know from the whole glam rock era of the seventies when artists like Adam Ant used to dress like dandies. However, Minarro does well to restrain the film slowing down the pace and photographing the action meticulously and yet in a still fashion that seems to have been influenced from the paintings of Caravaggio.

 

The action too, as mentioned before, is widely deadpan. Alex Brendemuhl as Amadeo van Savoy is an imposing presence, and his icy, sometimes indecipherable, and almost emotionless gaze conceals a type of sternness that is full of surprises – and the rest of the cast follows.

 

Thus, it is acceptable to see one moment of melodrama drastically followed by moments of musicals. Thus we accept the various intellectual quotations, some of which are eccentrically out of time and place. Thus, we come to term with the fact that the filmmaker is quietly defying the laws of the stoic rules of a vast majority of historical drama with a wave of slow and collected anarchy and sexual liberation. The sexual charge in Stella Cadente, inspired by a gradual and unlikely sexual awakening of Amedeo,  is in fact as important as it is never explicit.

 

Stella Cadente could, in other words, be Stella Decadente. It is the cinematic equivalent of a catwalk model covered in gems. As cold and in fact emotionless as it would seem, it also seems to purifyingly refute the impulsive exaggerations of the genre by playing its own game. Many films have sought to modernise period dramas, the most famous examples of these is Marie Antoinette – a perfect example of a love it or hate it flick. Here, the approach is more artful but nevertheless incredibly delightful, colourful and surprisingly joyous as well as packed with enough creativeness to reveals Minarro as a filmmaker worth looking out for.

 

 

 

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