Gerard Wood reviews “PROXIMA” for SFF MEDIA:
“Let’s be honest, the Spanish speaking world is not well known for its science fiction, although there are notable exceptions. Particularly in film. Alejandro Amenábar’s superb Abres Los Ojos(1997) (needlessly remade four years later by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky) is perhaps the best known Spanish language science fiction movie in recent times. On the contrary, it is the fantastic that so often finds a voice in Spanish. Characteristically though, it is not escapist fantasy but magic realism, which tends to have a political, philosophical or intellectual agenda, in much the same way as the best that SF has to offer.
There’s a moment at the very end of Carlos Atanes’ Proxima (2007) when you could almost be forgiven for thinking that this rare Spanish SF movie had degenerated into escapist fantasy, a fairy tale no less. You would be mistaken though. Atanes wrote and directed Proxima, and it is his script, more than anything else, that deserves recognition. The fairy tale ending in which our protagonist’s troubles are miraculously resolved through the discovery that he is The Chosen One is in fact a tongue in cheek signal that the entire movie has been a sophisticated allegory.”
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