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‘Manolete’ with Penelope Cruz ‘Manolete’ gets release

In his lifetime, Manolete, the legendary bullfighter, caused a stir living with his exuberant left-wing mistress beneath the disapproving glare of staunchly Catholic, 1940s Spain. Manolete, a film about this romance starring Adrien Brody and Penelope Cruz, is raising eyebrows again – this time among the anti-bullfighting camp.

After a three-year delay, the €20m (£18m) British-Spanish production is expected to be released this week in Paris – to the outrage of animal rights activists.

“It is inadmissible to release a film in which the hero is a matador,” said the Alliance Anticorrida, a French anti-bullfighting group, in a message to its 20,000 members. “If they are properly informed, a great number of spectators will avoid this new film.”

The film, by the Dutch director Menno Meyjes, was supposed to be released as early as 2007, but has been beset with production delays, debts and a ballooning budget. Bullfighting scenes were reportedly shot without using real animals, which inflated the cost.

“Let’s thank Lola Films for making a compassionate choice for bulls,” said the US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

In the film, a sombre Adrien Brody plays the matador from Cordoba enamoured with Penelope Cruz’s bonne vivante Mexican actress, Lupe Sino, who pines for a final glimpse of her lover after he is gored to death by the bull Islero in 1947.

The film’s producers and distributors have tried to reassure activists that the film – peppered with phrases like “I’m just your mistress; death is your wife” – is a story about love not killing. But the ever-growing anti-bullfighting movement appears unmoved. “It is forgetting a bit too quickly the images of Adrien Brody, his face and hands stained with blood in his torero costume,” the Alliance Anticorrida said.

Chloe

‘Chloe,’ Atom Egoyan’s new directorial work, is the lesbian version of Fatal Attraction. You can expect a high level of nudity and explicit, erotic sexual lesbian scenes that almost make it feel like soft core porn. The look of the film is different though and resembles more Stanley Kubrick’s artistic ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ The pacing, cinematography and camerawork, even its musical score, ignites thoughts of the film. The acting is strong and the story, for 85% of its duration, is utterly enthralling… until it collapses at the very end in an hyperbolic mess.

A gynecologist (Juliane Moore) hires an escort (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce her husband (Liam Neeson), whom she suspects of cheating. The results will back fire on her and reveal a side of herself she didn’t know existed.

For most of the film, this erotic thriller carries a slow enjoyable pace. It never reaches the depths of boredom. Each scene is crafted carefully to develop the characters and the meat of the story. The situations they are all in are plausible, but with an edge to them. Then out of nowhere, 20 minutes before its denouement, it becomes risible and loses all cogency and believability. I don’t even want to try and figure out why that happened, but this movie could have been great.

Despite that one deficiency, the whole of the film should not be dismissed. The engrossing, sometimes transfixing artistic sensuality of the sequences will keep you glued to your seat. The premise evokes real questions that ultimately many marriages suffer from, such as – can one ever really be only with one person for their whole life?

‘Chloe’ has an answer for that and it’s not necessarily the one you want to hear. The movie is a bit twisted, but it is very entertaining, you can’t wait to see what happens next and am sure most of you will feel the same too.