A young female resistance fighter (Folch) arrives in an occupied town near the French-Spanish border in 1943 and is taken in by the wife of an octogenarian sculptor (Rochefort) to act as model. Oscar-winner Trueba stages beauty and a youthful commitment to politics as a revitalising counterpoint to the languishing sterility of art, setting sparse dialogue and plot against lushly observed black and white landscape in this unusual take on the muse-artist genre.
El artista y la modelo (The Artist and the Model) | Directed by Fernando Trueba (Spain, France 2013) with Jean Rochefort, Aida Folch, Claudia Cardinale. Starts Dec 25
Originally published in issue #122, December 2013.