Cheap The Red Squirrel (Video) (Julio Medem) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Red Squirrel

Surreal bliss
More like 4 and a half stars
In a wonderfully bizarre scene "Lisa" faints on a little boy's attempt to hypnotize her and he nervously states that his sister usually stays awake (meaning upright, on her feet, or "conscious" while she is "hypnotized".) "Oh! I do?" she needlessly replies, coyly, without being aware of her coyness (as she is just a little child). The joke is very good as she has - like the criminally gorgeous woman playing Lisa - been feigning her propensities toward a psychological state, and the joke also serves as yet another reason to see this film and admire so many juxtapositions so successfully and violently meshed together. ("intertined", come to think of it, was the adjective used in the beginning of the movie to describe Lisa's eyes.) But truly, one would need a tremendous amount of space to properly try to review this movie, not to mention time. The only way I feel the red squirrel fails is that it is not a movie one can see once to really appreciate. Anyone would admit that it is thoroughly packed with metaphors and more: The metaphors are what make the movie. The movie fails in that respect - it is too complicated. But if this be a failure I am happy because each time I see it I see something new. I get so girlishly excited by the mere brilliance of letting "Let there be you, let there be me" sung in Nat King Cole's suave undertoned pleas for love soundtracking such an ambient love story that it has made me smile over and over to the point of psychological distraction. What a movie! Long live spanish surrealism! Also, though my command of spanish is quite poor, the dubbing seems very sure-footed and sensitive to the spanish(I only get away with making this observation by dint of the many times I have rewound the tape).

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not enough squirrels
Jay (Nancho Nova) takes Lisa (Emma Suarez) to hospital after witnessing her motorbike crash, and believing her to have amnesia, pretends to be her boyfriend. Spanish director Julio Medem wants to seduce us with a thriller, with the music of Albert Iglesias, and the film opens with the camera moving underwater. Though the initial exposition is stodgy, it soon starts to become mysterious and hypnotic. However the tension dissipates when we relocate to the Red Squirrel campsite, and other characters are introduced. It's hard to accept Jay as a romantic since Nova is such a creepy vampire, but Suarez more than compensates, showing some of the sensuality Sharon Stone released in Basic Instinct, even if Medem is as objectifying as Paul Verhoeven was. The solution to the amnesia is dismissed unsatisfactorily, and when Suarez's husband turns up and we cut to a large pair of scissors, we only have to wait for them to be used grossly. The film has a few stinkers - Medem shouldn't be encouraged to make a musical, some squirrel point of view shots, and a pair of hair-dyed lesbians in the campsite who smile knowingly.

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Who am I?
This is a pretty good movie that evolves around a victims amnesia. Julio Medem directs this beauty about identities lost and reinvented. Menden's roots for "Tierra" are here and are displayed quite nicely. There is some very good editing that gives the movie a good pace and some out of the ordinary cuts that dazzle visually. The two main characters are Lisa, as played by the attractive "rubia" Emma Suarez, and Jota or Jay as played by Nancho Suarez. Their chance meeting begins while Jota is about to go suey and suddenly a moto/motorcycle goes crashing over the rail for a two story plunge on to the sand at the beach. Jota, a musician with a broken heart "helps" her out and lies to her and authorites and "helps" her recover from amnesia. The story takes place mostly at a campground, the Red Squirrel, hence the name of the movie. One of the interesting things about good movies made from outside the US is seeing a portrait of other cultures. It is very interesting to see the differences and this movie does a great job at illustrating that, although that was probably not the intent. The campground is an excellent place to show these differences as is evident in the way people treat each other at the campground, almost communal in nature. The Europeans are very touchy feely and the scene where Lisa meets a neighbor camper shows the cultural differences. They hug and kiss on each cheek as an introduction, a little different from a nod or a hand shake, if that, in the US. A friendly relationship develops, except for a reluctant Jota, between the two "families". From here the story takes off as the audience learns about Lisa. Many things are revealed in the movie about both main characters in the process. Overall I enjoyed this movie and felt it showed the sadness some people have after a heart break and the lenghts they will go to mend their hearts. The movie is not one bit sappy, even a little strange in parts. There is enough going on to keep you guessing throughout the movie, which keeps you wondering and constantly trying to figure out the why. This is a good movie from a very talented Spanish director who I'd like to see more of.