The Obscure Spring
The Obscure Spring
| 21 October 2014 (USA)
The Obscure Spring Trailers

Igor is a plumber; Pina serves coffee. It is winter and they both deeply desire each other, but they are not free. In trying to figure out how to realize their love, she decides to make a lion costume for her little son and he decides to buy a photocopying machine for his wife. Spring will come at last and with it the consummation of love, filling their lives with hope and sex.

Reviews
euroGary

Despite it's not living up - for most of its running time - to the "contains explicit content" warning on the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015 website, I enjoyed 'Las Oscuras Primaveras' (English-language release title: 'The Obscure Spring'), a slow-moving Mexican film. Pina works in an office block as a tea lady (but no Mrs Overall she - actress Irene Azuela is very attractive). Working in the same block is Igor (José María Yazpik - a lived-in face but a powerful body). Both have humdrum home lives: she is a single mother living with her manipulative young son; he has a dowdy, nervous wife. They engage in a series of (disappointingly clothed) sexual encounters in the office block basement, but both baulk at the greater intimacy of a night at an hotel. The 'relationship' falters and they find different ways of compensating: Pina by throwing out her son's toys; Igor by buying a photocopier (no, really...)Azuela and Yazpik do a good job with their parts, creating believable, everyday people involved in unusual events. I like the fact that although there's much to feel sorry for in the characters - Pina's youth disappearing to the responsibilities of parenthood and Igor with his desperate-to-please but ultimately boring wife - both are also flawed. If you like kitchen sink dramas, this engrossing film is just right - and it contains a death scene of which 'Midsomer Murders' would be proud...

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