Mondays in the Sun
A port city in the north of Spain. The shipyard has closed, and a group of men who used to work there still meet every day at a bar run by one of their old colleagues. Santa is the loudest and the funniest, the unofficial leader, with a court case hanging over him for a lamp he smashed during the protests. José is bitter that his wife works while he does not. Lino dyes his hair and goes to job interviews where everyone else is twenty years younger. Amador drinks. Every day is the same: coffee, jokes, the ferry across the bay, and nothing to do.
Fernando León de Aranoa made one of the great films about unemployment, and what makes it so good is that it is not miserable. It is warm and very funny, full of the humour men use to protect their dignity. Javier Bardem, heavier and bearded, is magnificent as Santa, all swagger and wit on the surface and a deep, quiet anger underneath. Luis Tosar as José is just as strong, a man slowly losing the sense that he is useful to anyone, including his wife.
It is a film about what happens to people when work disappears: not only the money, but the pride, the routine, the place in the world. There is a story Santa tells about the grasshopper and the ant that says everything about the film's politics in two minutes. It won the Golden Shell at San Sebastián and beat Talk to Her to the Goya for Best Film. Funny, humane and heartbreaking. A must see.
