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UNCONSCIOUS (INCONSCIENTES)
Directed by: Joaquín Oristrell.
Produced by: Gerardo Herrero.
Written by: Oristrell, Teresa de Pelegrí & Dominic Harari.
Director of Photography: Jaume Peracaula.
Edited by: Miguel Ángel Santamaría.
Music by: Sergio Moure.
Released by: Regent Releasing.
Language: Spanish with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Spain/Germany/Italy/Portugal. 108 min. Rated R.
With: Leonor Watling, Luis Tosar, Mercedes Sampietro, Juanjo Puigcorbé, Núria Prims & Alex Brendemühl.

Sigmund Freud’s theories are sweeping Barcelona’s intellectual elite of 1913, where doctors and psychoanalysts await a visit from the controversial proponent of the unconscious himself. However, the host-to-be for Dr. Freud, Alma (Leonor Watling), has become hysterical three days before his visit because her husband, León (Alex Brendemühl), has just run off, saying only to her, “I have loved you, but I must go.”

Like any Freudian disciple, Alma knows to dig deeper. Somewhat incapacitated nine months into her pregnancy, she enlists the help of Salvador (Luis Tosar), her sister’s husband and León’s closest confidant, to find her missing spouse. Uncovering the mystery of events surrounding León’s disappearance galvanizes her interest even more than actually locating him. And as Alma and Salvador discover the secret lives of both their spouses, their suppressed interest in each other reveals itself as well.

Watling (Talk to Her) plays Alma with a pitch-perfect exuberance for life. She exudes naïve innocence in Alma's quest to be a strong New Woman in a new century of modern, intellectual ideals. Alma believes in expelling all repressed urges and appreciating all the impulses of the id, but her journey into the activities and dark worlds in which her husband inhabited give her overeager character a sense of balance by showing that, at heart, she’s every bit as repressed, unworldly, and secretly unhappy in her marriage as Salvador. Likewise, he never realized how unsatisfied he had been with Olivia, his wife and Alma’s sister. (Olivia has more than a few surprises herself beneath her prim, porcelain veneer.)

Bringing a contemporary sense of humor to a period piece is never easy and rarely successful. But the comic timing of Watling and Brendemühl make almost every joke work. The punch line at the end of the two-hour comedy’s conclusion is not only funny, but it’s transparently obvious that the unexpected culminating gag was the backbone of the entire script. With its overt and covert psychological/philosophical playfulness, writer/director Joaquín Oristrell’s script is what I Heart huckabees would have been if all the pretentious banter was swapped for slapstick. Zachary Jones
February 9, 2007