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SITGES 2024

Recensione: Luna

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- L'ultimo film di Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas su un equipaggio di astronauti bloccati nello spazio è un lavoro onesto, tecnicamente insufficiente ma non privo di qualità cinematografiche

Recensione: Luna
Marian Álvarez in Luna

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With a storyline that leans into its comparisons with Alfonso Cuarón’s space thriller Gravity [+leggi anche:
trailer
making of
scheda film
]
, Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas’ indie sci-fi drama Luna [+leggi anche:
intervista: Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas
scheda film
]
has screened at the Sitges Film Festival, where it had its world premiere in the Official Fantastic Competition. Given audience demands for “believable”, grounded science fiction, Luna, without a doubt, is a tough undertaking against Gravity’s $100 million budget. But Cortés-Cavanillas steps up to the plate and swings hard, held back by an overly convoluted script and lacklustre technical effects, but able to demonstrate that he’s got a vivid cinematographic style and the directing chops to do much more.

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A group of astronauts (a strong collection of Spanish favourites, including Marian Álvarez, Greta Fernández, Asier Etxeandia and Roberto Álamo) on a private expedition to photograph a comet becomes stranded on the Moon after a fragment of the comet hits the Earth, cutting off all communication. As they take an initial hit from incoming debris and begin to run out of oxygen, they must work together to find a way to survive, all while plagued by internal disagreements on what to do. The film is separated into chapters by the phases of the Moon (first quarter, new moon and so on), indicating each section occurs over three to four days, for a total of a few weeks.

The script by Jorge Navarro de Lemus, Elena Mayra and Cortés-Cavanillas relies heavily on complex dialogue-driven sequences, which drags down the film’s innate sense of dread, rather than letting the overwhelming nature of the void take over. Something the film could take from Gravity is a stronger focus on its most human dimensions, giving the talented actors more chances to breathe in moments of silence and anguish – and Luna works best when it does.

With the film’s limited budget, the director struggles to get a handle on the physics of the astronauts moving with the Moon’s gravity, which sometimes renders the movie much less believable than it could be. Luna’s saving grace is ultimately the director’s visual style, where he makes very good use of chiaroscuro images, with the astronauts in bright-white suits against the all-encompassing pitch black of space. Spacesuits outfitted with headlight-like lamps (by costume designer Ana Locking) keep faces in view and illuminate only what is necessary, leaving the rest to fade away, and the characters remain in the suits for the entire film.

Cortés-Cavanillas, who serves as a camera operator alongside DoP Eduardo Mangada, frames close-ups of the characters’ faces – without the spacesuit helmet – against a black background to convincingly create a sense of extreme isolation in a sort of portraiture effect. The filmmaker also utilises sound design by David Doubtfire to his advantage, where the crackle of the astronauts’ comms and the soft muffling of their voices over the white noise of the spacesuit radios create a sonic atmosphere where it always feels like something is about to happen.

Luna is at its most emotionally affective when Cortés-Cavanillas more or less forgets about portraying a convincing replica of the Moon, focusing instead on the existentialism of the situation and emphasising the aspects that make the film more like a stage play. Dramatic, very wide shots of the astronauts who appear like faint, glowing specks against the Moon's surface do more than enough to highlight the precarity of their situation and the daunting vastness of space.

Luna is a Spanish production by La Caña Sisters in collaboration with La Caña Brothers.

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