El sol del membrillo (1992)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Víctor Erice

Writers:

Víctor Erice (story)
Antonio López García (story)

Release Date:

2 April 1993 (UK)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | Drama

Plot:

The artist, Antonio Lopez, tries to paint the quince tree he planted some time back in his garden. Throughout his life...

Plot Keywords:

Art | Agriculture | Painter | Painting

Awards:

5 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Antonio López García	...	Himself (as Antonio López)
Marina Moreno
Enrique Gran
María López
Carmen López
Elisa Ruiz
José Carretero
Amalia Aria
Lucio Muñoz
Esperanza Parada
Julio López Hernández
Fan Xiao Ming
Yan Sheng Dong
Janusz Pietrzkiak
Marek Domagala

Also Known As:

Quince Tree of the Sun (International: English title)
The Dream of Light
The Sun of the Quince Tree (Hong Kong: English title)

Runtime:

133 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Finland:S | Hong Kong:I | Singapore:PG | Spain:13

Company:

Maria Moreno P.C.

Disingenuous

Highly-regarded semi-documentary about an artist's efforts to paint a quince tree in his garden over several months. He sets up a plumb line and a horizontal wire as guides, puts nails in the mud against which to position his toes, paints a 'grid' of little marks on individual leaves all over the tree, and tries to meticulously capture every tiny detail in his picture. At one point he has an assistant holding a long pole to nudge a particular leaf into position. You are beginning to suspect that he is the world's most obsessive (and slowest) painter when, after an hour (about six weeks in real time), with the picture only half-way finished, he scraps the whole canvas during a rainstorm. Here the illusion of authenticity is destroyed: the rain is clearly artificial, hosed over the garden in ridiculously excessive swathes. What a disappointment. You suddenly realise the whole thing is a set-up and you watch much more cynically as he spends the next hour (another six weeks) on a pencil drawing of the tree. This is equally ineffectual, but it doesn't matter because you realise it's all been a metaphor, and a rather facile one: the effort to distill something essential from life in your advancing years before it is too late. The intention was clearly existential, to slow right down and reflect and absorb and try to grasp something of life's fading richness – an original idea and very laudable, but unfortunately the images were not interesting enough, the sentiments not deep enough, and the execution not honest enough. Ceylan's "Clouds of May" attempted something similar much more successfully. It's art alright, but like the picture the artist creates, fairly weak art.