"El olivo" or "The Olive Tree" is a Spanish full feature film from this year that runs for approximately 95 minutes and as there is a road movie component to it, there are all kinds of languages included in here. The writer is Indian-born British filmmaker Paul Laverty and not too many will know him. However, the director (female filmmaker Icíar Bollaín) as well as the cast are exclusively or almost exclusively Spanish. This is probably one of the more known films from Spain this year, even if the cast are probably only known to Spanish people. Lead actress is the young Anna Castillo and she plays a woman trying to get back her grandfather's beloved olive tree when her granddad is clearly struggling with his health and he has been missing the tree for years after the family decided it had to be cut for financial reasons (over sentimental reasons).
I personally enjoyed the watch for the most part. There were parts and sequences that should have been left out, but I will come to these in a second. While I did not think Castillo was bad in the lead role, I still felt repeatedly while watching that I would have preferred the actress who plays the main character's friend, the one with the kinda short punk-style haircut, in her role instead. But you can't always get what you want. The weakest moment for the film was perhaps when they randomly through in a reference about the main character being touched inappropriately on several occasions as a child. What was that? You cannot do that without elaborating any further on it. Oh well... I generally would say that the second half of the film was better than the first because we actually found out more about the characters and there was more character development while the presentation part in the first half, also with the early phase of the road trip was just too long. I do believe they should have included the flashback scenes as at least one third of the movie and not just five minutes. I must say the fact that we saw so little from early when she was a child hurt the film's emotional impact by a lot.
But away from the negative, lets focus a bit on the positive now: I thought this was a really interesting and well-done film from the moment when they arrived at Dusseldorf. The company's actions seemed realistic and I also liked the reference to the ending in terms of happiness. Happy ending, I mean. It would have been pretty unrealistic if they had actually managed to get the tree back, but the way with planting a new one it was still fairly optimistic. Life goes. Life rises. And may this new olive tree be indeed luckier than the last one. The social media campaign component of the film is fine overall I guess. I can see it become a bit of a spectacle, but maybe it all went to fast. Then again the ride to Germany was much longer than it may have seemed for us audience members. As a whole, there were a handful scenes I was not too fond of and the dialogue writing also wasn't perfect on many occasions, but I still believe it is a solid little tale, especially after minute 50, and the positive outweighs the negative. Watch it if you can.
I personally enjoyed the watch for the most part. There were parts and sequences that should have been left out, but I will come to these in a second. While I did not think Castillo was bad in the lead role, I still felt repeatedly while watching that I would have preferred the actress who plays the main character's friend, the one with the kinda short punk-style haircut, in her role instead. But you can't always get what you want. The weakest moment for the film was perhaps when they randomly through in a reference about the main character being touched inappropriately on several occasions as a child. What was that? You cannot do that without elaborating any further on it. Oh well... I generally would say that the second half of the film was better than the first because we actually found out more about the characters and there was more character development while the presentation part in the first half, also with the early phase of the road trip was just too long. I do believe they should have included the flashback scenes as at least one third of the movie and not just five minutes. I must say the fact that we saw so little from early when she was a child hurt the film's emotional impact by a lot.
But away from the negative, lets focus a bit on the positive now: I thought this was a really interesting and well-done film from the moment when they arrived at Dusseldorf. The company's actions seemed realistic and I also liked the reference to the ending in terms of happiness. Happy ending, I mean. It would have been pretty unrealistic if they had actually managed to get the tree back, but the way with planting a new one it was still fairly optimistic. Life goes. Life rises. And may this new olive tree be indeed luckier than the last one. The social media campaign component of the film is fine overall I guess. I can see it become a bit of a spectacle, but maybe it all went to fast. Then again the ride to Germany was much longer than it may have seemed for us audience members. As a whole, there were a handful scenes I was not too fond of and the dialogue writing also wasn't perfect on many occasions, but I still believe it is a solid little tale, especially after minute 50, and the positive outweighs the negative. Watch it if you can.