Rating: NNNNN
THE HISPANO-AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL is a small event at the end of festival season, but it offers a few surprises that will snap the exhausted filmgoer back to attention. Friday night (June 1) features Golpes A Mi Puerta (Knocks At My Door, 1993), a classy melodrama about two nuns who shelter a young dissident at their own peril. Venezuelan director Alejandro Saderman crafts a conflict in which everyone is both guilty and innocent, and Veronica Oddo brings an aching sincerity to the plum role of the elder nun. Saturday’s matinee is Apariencias (Appearances, 1998), a romantic comedy that follows a now-familiar formula: guy pretends to be gay to get closer to his beloved. But this Argentine film is light-years ahead of Hollywood in that the hero, rather than being embarrassed by his guise, actually feels more empowered as a gay man. Other films that look interesting are La Deuda (The Debt, 1995), a morality tale about a murdered pawnbroker and the Colombian townsfolk who aren’t sad to see him go, and Sunday’s star-studded Spanish dramas La Nia De Tus Ojos (The Little Girl Of Your Eyes, 1998), directed by Fernando Trueba, with Penelope Cruz, and Entre Las Piernas (Between The Legs, 1999), with recent Oscar nominee Javier Bardem. NNN (June 1 to 3, Bloor)
