07/11/2014 - Manuel Gómez Pereira's launch into a thriller, starring Juan Diego Botto, Paz Vega and Alberto San Juan, kicks off the Seville European Film Festival

Genre film is made by keeping in mind the steps involved in its preparation, and just like everything that's made likewise, has two potential results: to be a success or failure. Veteran Spanish director Manuel Gómez Pereira (creator of comedies typical of 90s Spain, like Why do they call it love when they mean sex? or Love can seriously damage your health and the more recent movies, Queens and Hangman [+see also:
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film profile]) in La ignorancia de la sangre [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (lit. "Ignorance of blood"), opening film of the Seville European Film Festival, sticks to the genre recipie, in this case thriller. And the result?

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The movie follows one of the stories starring the chief homicide detective of Seville, Javier Falcón, a character created by English writer Robert Wilson a decade ago, with his work The Blind Man of Seville. This time round, the chief (played by Juan Diego Botto) finds himself simultaneously trapped between two cases: an old friend (Alberto San Juan) working undercover in an Islamist terrorist group finds himself on the edge of the abyss when attempts are made to recruit his son for the cause, and the son of his girlfriend (Paz Vega) is kidnapped by one (or two) Russian mafias that are demanding money and information that an unexpected incident let fall into the hands of the police. In that same trap, La ignorancia de la sangre is something else: the screenplay leaves complexity behind to replace it with the mother's search for her son (albeit with a performance worthy of Vega). Thus, the movie, prepared by a firm hand and with great style, follows the patterns that define detective best-sellers, just like it's maker, without departing from them or desiring to.

What's more, in this Maestranza Films and Tornasol Films production, Pereira (or better yet, Wilson) converts the city of Seville into a crossroads of the criminal melting pot of our globalized society, in which European mafias are faced with the Islamist terrorist threat, using it as the perfect excuse to trifle with the thriller genre.

(Translated from Spanish)