Director: Isabel Coixet
Starring: Timothy Spall, Sarita Choudhury, Carmen Machi, Pedro Casablanc, Ana Torrent
Distributor: Rialto Films
Runtime: 118 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Strong coarse language and brief nudity

Peter has worked all his life at a Manchester bank. When he is awarded an early retirement, he decides to visit his brother in Benidorm, only to discover that he’s disappeared.

This subtitled Spanish drama-thriller film is written and directed by Isabel Coixet, and the movie is co-produced by Pedro Almodovar.

Coixet, was nominated for Best Director at the Goya Awards in 2021, and took out the Cinema Writers Circle Awards in Spain in that year. She is a prolific film director of contemporary Spain, and the award she received was for filmmakers who take risks, and demonstrate versatility. This film amply demonstrates those features.

In the film, Peter Riordan (Spall) is a dedicated bank worker who is obsessively inclined, and he is fixated on weather phenomena: To him, ‘weather is a way to feel about something happening’. He leads a solitary existence in Manchester, UK, and is forced into early retirement for being over-sensitive to the desperation expressed by his bank’s clients. He decides to visit his brother, Daniel, with whom he has had little contact. He goes in search of Daniel, but cannot find him in Benidorm when he gets there. Daniel failed to meet him at the airport when he arrived, and left no message of his whereabouts, which Peter thinks is entirely uncharacteristic of his brother.

After Peter reaches Benidorm, he finds out that Daniel owns the Benidorm Club, where a group of performers behave exotically and erotically on stage. He also finds a string of unpaid debts and criminal involvement linked to the club, which shows evidence of mafia connection. At the club, he comes across Alex (Choudhury), an enigmatic and mysterious woman, and falls in love with her. Alex is one of the club’s main performers, but she was also Daniel’s business partner, and Alex is looking for him too. Peter is subtly persuaded not to report Daniel as missing by policewoman, Marta (Machi), but he goes ahead with his report, and asks Alex to help him find his missing brother.

It soon becomes apparent to Peter that Benidorm is a dangerous, sordid, unpredictable, but exciting place. The hedonistic pleasures that the city offers, represent an alien environment to the highly-controlled person Peter. The environment simultaneously disgusts and fascinates him.

Spall inhabits the character of Peter Riordan, and reflects superbly Isabel Coixet’s concern for minute detail. He maintains his obsessiveness while staying loyal to his brother. Choudhury is charismatic as Alex; and Machi is intriguingly accepting about the way things ‘just are’. The film jolts the viewer as it shifts from the bleakness of Manchester to the vibrancy, complexity, and erotic nature of life in Mediterranean Spain.

Coixet paints her characters in revealing detail. No-one is spared her searching gaze – from the police, down to local bikers, nightclub drinkers, drug takers, corrupt criminals, sex-workers, and club entertainers. The crudity of what she shows is absorbed into a picture of human diversity that commands viewers’ engagement. It is hard to be indifferent to any of the persons she puts on display. Her film is a sensitive, intelligent portrayal of human differences that project happiness, sadness, and missed opportunities. The town’s many contradictions draw the viewer in, and the sheer oddity of Benidorm’s inhabitants invites a melancholic intent to observe human behaviour in its diversity – in that, there is more than a hint of Pedro Almodovar at work.

This is a film with a thriller plot that turns into a romantic drama about the interaction (and attraction) between two unlikely people – a burlesque dancer, and an over-controlled bank clerk who wants to be ‘liberated’ in some way. It combines humour, sadness and joy originally, and the film concludes reflectively by celebrating the confessional, individualistic poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winning, American poet, Sylvia Plath.