Writer/director Benito Zambrano has delivered a brilliant observation of real situations in the lives of a broken family and lonely people who only want to feel useful again.It infuriates me that I cannot see this kind of film -- nothing even remotely approximating it -- from the Hollywood celluloid factory. Given over to LaLaLand, this would have been yet another throwaway melodrama drenched in its own soapiness. In Zambrano's hands, this low-budget gem eschews sentimentality and high-tech wizardry, digs deeply into characterization and shows us a view of the world we wouldn't know existed if we depended on Hollywood to show us. Zabrano's dialogue is just deadly accurate and very 'real'. The acting is uniformly superb, but Maria Galiana as the long-suffering, illiterate, sturdy Earth Mother is astonishing. She ambles on and off the screen with a weary, brilliant light. She has sacrificed her entire life in the service of a husband who doesn't deserve to lick her shoes. She does it because, well, that's the way it is for women of her generation.Carlos Alvarez-Novoa is equally brilliant as the the old neighbour who offers his considerable heart to the mother and to her pregnant-and-confused daughter Maria, beautifully played with passion and rage by Ana Fernandez.Both Galiana and Alvarez-Novoa give us faces and gestures of old and tired people who know too well the unfairness of life for the poor. There is a wonderful scene between the two when Alvarez-Novoa has an attack of diarrhea and Galiana insists on helping him. He resists, telling her he reeks of excrement. Galiana handles the situation as casually as she would the copious body wastes of the pigs she keeps back home in her native village. This tiny touch of humanity is the kind of scene one sees frequently in European films (and rarely, if ever, in flicks from Hollywood). Benito Zambrano has done a masterful job here. Like other politically conscious writers and directors working in Europe, he takes the reality of proletarian existence and makes it into something very real, all without sappiness. This is one terrific film.

When I saw this movie, nobody told me his plot. I just watched it and at the end, my heart was broke, but was too stunned. The story is so hard of tell, and Benito Zambrano, the director, does it slowly, showing all the sensitive possible, and making cry everybody.But... what wants to show this movie? Only one thing: A mother's love. The performance of Maria Galiana is absolutely PERFECT. Ana Fernandez and Carlos Alvarez Novoa are correct, but Maria Galiana is better than they. I cried watching the movie because of the end, just look the scene when the mother's sleeping in front of the sunset. Just beautiful.The powerful of the images and the impact of the performances make of SOLAS the best movie of 90s in Spain.

I only just watched this film for the first time. Saw it on my laptop. I just adored this movie ...everyone in it and the way it was made. The first great thing about it was how totally simpathico I felt with the mum. The so unhollywood adorable mum. Everyone in the film reminded me of someone I know. To tell you the truth I was blubbering wreck by the end because there was so many resonances with my own life, with the relationship I have with my own daughter, with the way men behave in real life. I checked out the database for further films made by the director but there were none.???? I cant believe that after such a wonderful debut Benito Zambrano hasn't gone on to make it big in the film world. There is a gaping void out there waiting to be filled by directors of his calibre. Can I make plea for more movies in this genre please. Also on a very personal level it is a knitting movie and I am collecting them so it instantly goes into my top ten.

A very touching movie. During the movie you almost start wondering if there are only sad people around. But even the saddest ones (and they now, because they have had a fight about who the saddest one was) can shift to a better life.