Year of Grace

This sweet little comedy "Any de Gràcia," is a 2012 Seattle International Film Festival entry from Spain. It was written and directed by Ventura Pons, who commands an impressive list of nominations and Film Festival awards throughout the world.

We watch a young man with big dreams set out to seek his fortune. This time the Promised Land is Barcelona, Spain. The young men in his village watch with a mixture of envy and skepticism. Our hero finds free room and board with a lonely old woman who needs some help around her apartment but these two have some major challenges as they adjust to each other's expectations.

This is predictable in an unpredictable way, in other words, we have a pretty good idea where we are going to end up, but have no idea how we are going to get there.

Our two main protagonists are:

• Oriol Pla ("Animals") is David, our starry-eyed adventurer; he paints, plays guitar and fancies himself quite the ladies' man.
• Rosa Maria Sardà ("Maktub") is Grace, the elderly curmudgeon; she likes to play cards, loves her parakeet and dumps water on noisy folks in the street below her apartment.

David makes friends in the city and at college, while Grace is friends only with her neighbor. She doesn't like the bartender downstairs because his customers get unruly in the evening. Her elderly parakeet Pinocchio is a really GOOD watchdog!

This is pleasant and satisfying: no sweaty bodies, no gunshots, no car chases and no blowie uppie stuff. ...smile...