IT SNOWS IN BENIDORM
****
Director: Isabel Coixet
Screenwriter: Isabel Coixet
Principal cast:
Timothy Spall
Sarita Choudhury
Carmen Machi
Pedro Casablanc
Ana Torrent
Édgar Vittorino
Country: Spain/UK
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 118 mins.
Australian release date: 17 March 2022.
Isabel Coixet is one of the most prolific Spanish directors, with a significant number of features, documentaries and short films to her credit since the mid-eighties; the last film of hers to be seen here was The Bookshop in 2018. Her latest release, It Snows in Benidorm, covers somewhat similar emotional territory, in that its protagonist is operating in a world with which he is unfamiliar, trying to navigate without the aid of a compass.
Peter (Timothy Spall) is a loan officer who works in a bank and has a fascination for meteorological phenomena. The film opens with a distraught couple begging him not to foreclose on them because they’ve fallen behind on their repayments and are in fear of being evicted. He works for WeBank, run by a cold-hearted Holocaust-denier who is completely unsympathetic to his clients’ needs. A few days after Peter approves the couple’s request for a loan extension, he is told, “We are letting you go. It’s a reward for your years of service”. He’s angry but reconciles to his unemployed status because he’s sick of “offering money to people who don’t need it and refusing money to people who do”, so he decides to travel to Benidorm to visit his brother Daniel, who he hasn’t seen for “10 or 12 years” - he’s not even sure how long it’s been. When his brother doesn’t turn up at the airport to meet him, Peter goes to his apartment and is let in by a suspicious concierge, who informs him that Daniel hasn’t been seen for some days. A few days later, a mysterious woman, Alex (Sarita Choudhury), turns up at the apartment, saying that Daniel owes money to his employees at the night club he co-owns with her. In the following weeks, as Peter tries to establish the motive behind Daniel’s disappearance, he begins to feel an emotional attachment to Alex and the pair establish a relationship built on their mutual loneliness and distrust of others.
As a location, Benidorm is both magnificent and tawdry. When Peter searches for Daniel, we are taken on a trip through the town’s seedy beachside bars and strip clubs, full of British tourists and expats revelling in the Spanish heat. The desperation of the situation is brilliantly etched on Spall’s face as he observes the decadence around him. As Coixet explains, “Benidorm has always intrigued me. That mixture of Blackpool hooligans, pensioners doing aquagym, shots for one euro, traffickers, families, kitsch, roast chicken, beans on toast, Elvis imitators, impossible buildings, karaoke, bingo, town bands, excess, constitutes priceless material for any storyteller”. The place really helps to illustrate the dilemma Peter faces, for he loves natural beauty and the strangeness of this built environment contributes to his sense of separation from people and his unease about his missing brother. Spall is fantastic, his hang-dog expression hiding his character’s single-minded tenacity and British/Indian actress Choudhury is well cast as his enigmatic and exotic romantic interest.
The movie moves slowly but, by doing so, it captures the feeling of emptiness and despair that almost everyone in it seems to experience yet is unable to withdraw from. As Alex puts it, “One day I will leave, read, cook, go grey and get fat”, but somehow that day never seems to arrive. Perhaps the location is a metaphor for one last hurrah. Coixet reveals mystery in the everyday; the Goya-winning director seems to specialise in finding the unusual in the quotidian and It Snows in Benidorm sticks to that formula. It is an intriguing film that will leave you wondering - there are no easy answers to be found in her Benidorm.
Screenwriter: Isabel Coixet
Principal cast:
Timothy Spall
Sarita Choudhury
Carmen Machi
Pedro Casablanc
Ana Torrent
Édgar Vittorino
Country: Spain/UK
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 118 mins.
Australian release date: 17 March 2022.
Isabel Coixet is one of the most prolific Spanish directors, with a significant number of features, documentaries and short films to her credit since the mid-eighties; the last film of hers to be seen here was The Bookshop in 2018. Her latest release, It Snows in Benidorm, covers somewhat similar emotional territory, in that its protagonist is operating in a world with which he is unfamiliar, trying to navigate without the aid of a compass.
Peter (Timothy Spall) is a loan officer who works in a bank and has a fascination for meteorological phenomena. The film opens with a distraught couple begging him not to foreclose on them because they’ve fallen behind on their repayments and are in fear of being evicted. He works for WeBank, run by a cold-hearted Holocaust-denier who is completely unsympathetic to his clients’ needs. A few days after Peter approves the couple’s request for a loan extension, he is told, “We are letting you go. It’s a reward for your years of service”. He’s angry but reconciles to his unemployed status because he’s sick of “offering money to people who don’t need it and refusing money to people who do”, so he decides to travel to Benidorm to visit his brother Daniel, who he hasn’t seen for “10 or 12 years” - he’s not even sure how long it’s been. When his brother doesn’t turn up at the airport to meet him, Peter goes to his apartment and is let in by a suspicious concierge, who informs him that Daniel hasn’t been seen for some days. A few days later, a mysterious woman, Alex (Sarita Choudhury), turns up at the apartment, saying that Daniel owes money to his employees at the night club he co-owns with her. In the following weeks, as Peter tries to establish the motive behind Daniel’s disappearance, he begins to feel an emotional attachment to Alex and the pair establish a relationship built on their mutual loneliness and distrust of others.
As a location, Benidorm is both magnificent and tawdry. When Peter searches for Daniel, we are taken on a trip through the town’s seedy beachside bars and strip clubs, full of British tourists and expats revelling in the Spanish heat. The desperation of the situation is brilliantly etched on Spall’s face as he observes the decadence around him. As Coixet explains, “Benidorm has always intrigued me. That mixture of Blackpool hooligans, pensioners doing aquagym, shots for one euro, traffickers, families, kitsch, roast chicken, beans on toast, Elvis imitators, impossible buildings, karaoke, bingo, town bands, excess, constitutes priceless material for any storyteller”. The place really helps to illustrate the dilemma Peter faces, for he loves natural beauty and the strangeness of this built environment contributes to his sense of separation from people and his unease about his missing brother. Spall is fantastic, his hang-dog expression hiding his character’s single-minded tenacity and British/Indian actress Choudhury is well cast as his enigmatic and exotic romantic interest.
The movie moves slowly but, by doing so, it captures the feeling of emptiness and despair that almost everyone in it seems to experience yet is unable to withdraw from. As Alex puts it, “One day I will leave, read, cook, go grey and get fat”, but somehow that day never seems to arrive. Perhaps the location is a metaphor for one last hurrah. Coixet reveals mystery in the everyday; the Goya-winning director seems to specialise in finding the unusual in the quotidian and It Snows in Benidorm sticks to that formula. It is an intriguing film that will leave you wondering - there are no easy answers to be found in her Benidorm.