'What Remains of You' (★★★★✩), Tata Mia and other new releases this week

These are the new releases hitting theaters this May 16:

Ratings

★★★★★ masterpiece ★★★★ very good ★★★ good ★★ average ★ bad

What Remains of You ★★★★✩Directed by Gala Gracia Cast: Laia Manzanares, Ángela Cervantes, Anna Tenta Production: Spain, 2025. 91 m. Drama My grandmother

By Salvador Llopart

Everything points to the future of cinema being in the countryside. A certain rural nomadism has pervaded much of the most significant Spanish production in recent years, with titles like Alcarràs (2022) and Lo que arde (2019), as well as As bestas (2022) and Suro (2022). Films that share a landscape, as if the idea of ​​an emptied Spain had taken over the cinematic imagination, becoming a reflection—a mirror—of the truth we can't find within ourselves, displaced, urban beings yearning for less harsh horizons. What Remains of You, Gala Gracia's directorial debut, is a good example of this cinematic neo-ruralism , so to speak.

A work of intense emotions, redolent of wet earth and grazing sheep, it truthfully captures the longing for return and the need to grieve for what was left behind. Make no mistake, however. Gala Gracia doesn't mystify rural life. She takes a realistic, far from bucolic, look at the meaning of contact with the land. The rural setting is provided by the Aragonese Pyrenees, which Michele Paradisi's photography captures with grandeur and sensitivity. It tells of two sisters who reunite after their father's death to discuss the future of the family property; two "nannies," as one calls the other, from very different life circumstances. One (Laia Manzanares) returns to the life she left behind long ago. The other (Ángela Cervantes) has stayed in the village, managing her own affairs. The first refuses to sell out of nostalgia or guilt, as if seeking to stop time. The second, the one who stayed, sees things differently. He thinks with peasant realism about his sister's futile efforts to preserve the past.

What Remains of You isn't about dramatic confrontations and hatred. On the contrary, everything in it is everyday, mundane, as silent as the countryside itself. A drama that advances, more through whispers than shouts. Guided by the steady pulse of a director who knows what she wants. Both actresses, Laia Manzanares and Ángela Cervantes, help in the endeavor. Both are superb at conveying two different visions of existence. Without forgetting that, above all, they are two sisters who love each other.

Centaurs of the night ★★★★✩Director: Marc Recha Performers: Lluís Soler, Montse Germán, Muntsa Alcañiz Production: Spain, 2024 (105 minutes). Drama Excursion to Poblet

By Jordi Batlle

Centaures de la nit , a title with obvious Fordian resonances, is a film so elusive and slippery that the first obstacle it puts in the way, although only for label buffs, is its generic affiliation. Is it a drama, a comedy, an adventure film about a treasure hunt, a dreamlike fantasy, a covert Western, or a purely experimental filigree? There's a bit of everything in this singular, exciting, and otherworldly artifact, filmed at the Poblet monastery in fascinating black and white (masterful work by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, in a very Nordic register: Bergman or Dreyer) and starring a group of blind men visiting the place; curiously, the monks are also blind: here only the female characters can see.

Rather than sticking to a single plot, the film recreates a bewitching atmosphere where the transcendent and the spiritual alternate with humour (whether bitter, ferocious, like the memorable, poison-soaked dialogues between Lluís Soler and Muntsa Alcañiz, or relaxed: Soler making people believe he's looking for thyme for a soup) and with the simple contemplation of the sky, the paths, the rock... The monastery and its surroundings become protagonists with as much or more weight than that of the group of blind people; after all, nature and open spaces have been, from the now distant El cielo sube (The Sky Rises) through Pau i el seu germà ( The Ago), Dies d'agost (Ago) , Petit indi (Little Indian) or La vida lliure (Living in the Woods) , a constant in Marc Recha's films.

Sponsored from beyond the grave by the ghost of Luis Buñuel (the scene of the blind men beating the excursion leader could easily be a Viridiana outtake), Centaures de la nit is a film conceived and executed by Recha with an almost obscene creative freedom. It contains moments of great beauty, not least the close-up, tactile images of water, rarely portrayed (and soundtracked) with such crystalline purity.

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found★★★✩✩Directed by Raoul PeckProduction: France, 2024 (105 min) Documentary Exchange of glances

By Philipp Engel

The device doesn't quite live up to the photographs, many of them unpublished, of the exiled South African Ernest Cole, sometimes supported by archival material, that parade before our eyes. The photographs are, however, impressive, and the discourse they create about the racism that returns with a vengeance is overwhelming.

What sticks most deeply in the viewer's mind are the stares Cole catches on the street, on one continent or another, at the camera. It's not just that they're being photographed without permission; it's because a Black man is doing it.

The instinct ★★✩✩✩Director: Juan AlbarracínInterpreters: Javier Pereira, Fernando Cayo, Eva LlorachProduction: Spain, 2024 (92 min). Thriller The canine method

By P. Engel

Low-budget guerrilla filmmaking. Just one location, three actors, and a compelling premise: an architect hires a dog trainer to overcome his fear of leaving the house.

The camera moves well, and the promising director combines the image with a more tense image, evoking the traumatic past, and with dog training documentaries. Beyond the interpretive duel and the interesting device, the plot moves from the predictable to the implausible, without managing to shake us out of déjà vu .

Jane Austen Ruined My Life★★★✩✩Directed by: Laura PianiCast by: Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie AnsonProduction: France, 2024 (94 min). Romantic comedy To write or not to write

By P. Engel

An original attempt to hybridize French and British romantic comedy based on the cult of the title author, although rather than subverting the clichés, it perpetuates them. However, the quality of the image and a well-aimed background regarding the pitfalls of literary creation stand out. Wise advice from an aspiring Hugh Grant to the Amélie-esque bookseller at Shakespeare & Co.: "You have to write from the ruins." In other words, don't throw your texts in the trash, but work on them again and again.

The Wolf's Tale ★★✩✩✩Directed by: Norberto López AmadoCast by: Lucía Jiménez, Paco Tous, Daniel GraoProduction: Spain, 2025. 93 m. Comedy Skid imminent

By S. Llopart

A theatrical flavor for a miniature that advances through misunderstandings and half-truths. Two central characters—there are more, but they don't tell much—are enough. A separated couple, embodied with comic flair by Paco Tous and Lucia Giménez, tearing each other apart while worrying about their missing daughter. The mansion where almost everything takes place is sufficient for a comedy whose greatest interest lies in the imminent surprise, with too many curves on the road to the truth and the consequent danger of skidding.

After the Summer ★★✩✩✩Directed by Yolanda CentenoCast by Alexandra Jiménez, Juan Diego BottoProduction: Spain, 2025 (94 minutes). Drama Family conflict

By J. Batlle

A couple separates. The child is his, but she loves him as if she were his real mother and now fears losing him forever.

A family conflict, like so many others that must occur every day, is presented in a film with pretentious thesis-like attitudes, with stereotypical characters, clichéd dramatic situations, and an annoying tendency to demonstrate rather than show. Alexandra Jiménez, who is as good at melodrama as she is at madcap comedy, saves the day.