Fans of Eric Rohmer - and who, in their right mind, is not? - will be happy to see a Spanish comedy done on the same lines of light, sympathetic wit as the veteran French director manages to do so regularly with young people who have acquired an articulate tongue some years before wisdom.
Debutant writer-director Agusti Vila has studied Rohmer's style well, but honours him in spirit without slavishly imitating him. Juan (Alex Brendem&uoml;l), a handsome, but unusually taciturn young Spaniard, splits with his girlfriend and begins looking for a new one. Friends and family hinder more than help, inviting him to dinners with eligible singles, yet somehow contriving to put him off the mark when the conversation exposes the flaws in the potential fiancées. The cross-table tit-for-tat, especially with a stubborn vegan girl who ends up accusing this family of carnivores of being "murderers", precisely catches that note of monomania which Rohmer sympathetically attaches to the single-issue kids of Paris.
Eventually Juan takes his own destiny in hand - or, rather, in his phlegmatic way, lets destiny lead him - by going daily to a bench in the park and then on to a table in a cafe and allowing chance to plonk the girl down beside him. His bet pays double, with pert Alicia (Victoria Freire) and placid Ana (Mónica López) offering him a choice of mates. Of course, it's too much, too soon; and the comedy of chance, which resembles Rohmer's own scenario of young love's excess complications, A Summer's Tale, set in Dinard, becomes one about a man who can't make up his mind.
Short though it is, it would have been even better shorter. But after Almodovar's yelling matches, it carries itself lightly.
A Bench In The Park (Un Banco En El Parque)
Cert: N/A
