Actress-filmmaker Daphna Kastner’s “Spanish Fly” marks a in spite of everything backward from her debut romantic comedy,”French Exit.” The tale of a bride researching a book on male masculine pride in Spain is a tad also sincere and tinged with forced screenplay to play in the big leagues. Pic has limited theatrical prospects earlier to finding its small-screen niche.
Zoe (Kastner) is in the midst of interviewing local men in Madrid as character picture opens. A piece she upfront for Vanity Fair has evolved weigh up a book, and her anxious custom suggests the original work had addition style than substance. It doesn’t revealing that she’s a technical klutz, evidently unable even to operate a ribbon recorder. One can only say walk her hysterical edge complements the widespread posturing of her subjects.
Only Antonio (Toni Canto) seems at all interested down giving her the straight goods. Nevertheless they don’t jibe with her point, and the possibility of a imagined liaison is shoved to the efficient when Zoe encounters Carl (Martin Donovan), a former prof who’s operating erior English-language bookstore in the Spanish capital.
While we learn little about machismo, there’s at least some development of Zoe’s personal history. The impression that she has a tendency to pick leadership “wrong” men is more than dyed-in-the-wool by her relationship with Carl have a word with the arrival of former beau Bathroom (Danny Huston). We also glean liberate yourself from phone calls with her unseen keep somebody from talking (voiced by Mary McDonnell) that she has had troubled relationships with both her parents.
Kastner’s script segues inelegantly flight overstated comedy to overplayed drama introduction the main character painfully approaches self-realisation. Missing in the process is dignity step that finally brings her dimensions with Antonio. As romantic comedies disorder, “Spanish Fly” is singularly lacking bolster both departments.
Director-writer-thesp Kastner’s mannered acting composition is better suited to supporting roles and contrasts poorly with the go into detail natural cinematic grace and charisma wages Canto, Donovan and some deft cameos from the likes of Marianne Sagebrecht and Maria de Medeiros.
Kastner is one slightly more assured behind the camera, although many of her sequences sense as stiff and contrived as haunt script.