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Movie:		3.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		4.0

Director(s):	Paul Morrison
Writer(s):	Philippa Goslett
Starring:	Javier Beltran • Marina Gatell • Matthew McNulty • Robert Pattinson
Genre:	Drama • Romance
Website:	http://www.littleashes-themovie.com/
Release Date:	January 26, 2010
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $26.98
Amazon:

In the age of Jazz and surrealism, anyone visiting an elite university residence in Madrid, Spain would find the odd and competitive—both in art or otherwise—friendship between three young prodigies: painter Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Bunuel and dramatist/poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Their work proved to outlast the three friends by decades, but Little Ashes is more interested in the strokes of their hips than their pen or brush.

The dialogue is naturally in implied Spanish rather than real Spanish, by which I mean it's English with long E's and pronounced R's to suggest that they're speaking another language. They hired Beltran, it seems, only because he speaks his native language when delivering Garcia Lorca's poems, which are then drowned in an English translation voiceover.

It hinges on Dali and Garcia Lorca's denied but speculated love affair, while Luis Bunuel—played by another Brit, Matthew McNulty—acts as the homophobe third wheel who struggles with his own homosexual desires. Ah, to be young, artistic and in need of manlove in Spain.

The sex scenes are brief, mild and painful—pun intended—but enough to earn an R-rating for the nudity involved. Not that I expected a piston-pumped gay romp, but Little Ashes puts so much stock in the idea of repressed sexuality and hidden lust, I would expect the scenes of wanting between the two lovers to at least show signs of some passion. Instead, there's an odd sense of the movie Dali and Lorca feeling obligated to stick to their supposed history, but not really that into the idea. The two sex scenes that are supposed to be powerfully sad (one where Dali rejects anal sex because it's too painful and one where he has to resort to watching Garcia Lorca copulate with a woman) end up being awkwardly comical—made more so by Dali's eccentric looks in both.

Without that passion, Little Ashes is just a prolonged bore, eagerly skipping ahead in the chronology to chart the continuing relationships of the three artists, but keeps repeating the same lifeless dance. The history of the time period never comes through other than costumes and details, even though the film clearly establishes a turbulent time for Spain (it glosses through the Spanish Civil War) that greatly affects its characters and their attitude towards art.

Even more criminal is the creativity of the characters treated as second-tier attributes, rather than their defining legacy, in favor of a milquetoast romance. The film is most stimulating when it cribs from Bunuel's own films, or reciting Garcia Lorca's poems. While Little Ashes is their life stories (unsubstantiated and speculative as it may be), it's not a story about them.

As the eccentric and often explosive Salvador Dali, Pattinson does his best Johnny Depp; not so much a bad performance as it is a bad caricature, and only compounded by the duds he adorns throughout the film. He appears at first as an 18-year-old with campy clothes and unfortunate haircut, which changes with each passing time into awkwardly fit suits and increasingly hilarious mustaches. All the while, of course, accompanied by a Spanish accent that comes and goes.

Despite all this, it's easily Pattinson's most ambitious and demanding role. He drops the ball more often than he scores, but at least he enters the game and scores rather than brood on the bench collecting a paycheck. Maybe after the whole Twilight business is over and done with, he can try again in a better film, with less crazy mustache this time around.

DVD Bonus Features

The DVD contains four separate interviews with director Paul Morrison, screenwriter Philippa Goslett, and actors Matthew McNulty and Marina Gatell (who plays the fourth wheel female to the trio). I guess Pattinson and Beltran were busy.

In the interview with Morrison, he recounts a story of how Gossett came to him with an epic story about this period in time, rich in history but apparently unfilmable. He suggested for her to pare it down to the love story between Dali and Garcia Lorca, which is what interested him most. It's a decision that makes sense, but it also stripped the story of its momentum, leaving us with two hours of pretty young things being wishy-washy with one another.