'My name is Angela. I am about to be killed' (Thesis (DVD))

Member Name: Cwej1

Product:	Thesis (DVD)
Date:	29/01/02 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strong cast, Fantastic direction

Disadvantages: Maybe a LITTLE overlong?, Horrible contrived in places

One fine Sunday evening, having finished work I was extremely tired. I had been out the night before and got only about 4 hours sleep before going to work. That evening I decided I was going to get home, cook dinner, watch a DVD and go to sleep.

So I get to the rental shop and realise that there are no English speaking films that I particularly want to see. However, my attention is drawn to the dramatic cover of 'Tesis' (Thesis in Spanish). I didn't really read the back cover properly but thought it looked interesting and spent my hard earned 99p on renting it out for the night.

I cooked my dinner, made a couple of phone calls to friends, got ready for bed, turned the lights out and put the DVD on.

MY GOD DID I WISH THAT I WATCHED THIS MOVIE WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

I am not one to scare easily but Alejandro Amenabar may quite well be a genius in creating tension and fear in both his characters and the viewer. He is certainly one of the most remarkable filmmakers in the world today and having seen 'The Others', which is one of the only films that has ever scared me properly in my life, I should have guessed that 'Tesis' was going to frighten the living daylights out of me.

The divine Ana Torrent plays Angela, a media/cinema student who is writing a thesis about the effects of violence on television in people. To make her work more authentic and detailed she enlists the help of her tutor, played by Miguel Picazo, to find films of such violence that they would not be able to be seen on television.

The tutor finds a video in a library - but when he settles down to view it, his shock is so huge that he suffers a severe asthma attack and dies. Angela discovers the body and with resident 'freak' Chema, played by Fele Martinez, watches the horrific footage.

I won't say any more than that Angela finds herself involved in a disturbing plot and her own life falls into danger as s
he investigates the source of the disturbing material she has witnessed...

In all fairness, the storyline is pretty much a run-of-the-mill thriller, with the typical twists and turns in the plot along the way. Who is the bad guy? Is it someone that Angela trusts? Or is it her prime suspect? The acting, as an English person watching a Spanish movie, is difficult to evaluate but from what I can tell is handled very well, particularly by Torrent, who conveys her character's terror, but strength of mind, with balance and maturity. The cast overall is fairly young but is put together well.

The plot in places is horribly contrived. After watching the movie, Chema and Angela come up with some particularly terrible presumptions that seem very unlikely to be that obvious - 'They use a zoom focus, therefore it must be this kind of camera...' WHATEVER! - and when Angela manages to steal the floppy disc from the head office of a video camera company you have to raise an eyebrow.

But the standout point is the direction. The tension that Amenabar seems to be able to convey with incredible ease is amazing. Like 'The Others', the scariest moments are not particularly violent or shocking parts - they are instead brilliantly directed, slow but excruciatingly tense moments. Some directors will have a fairly well-lit room with the characters saying 'It's really dark, I can't see'... in 'Tesis', when the lights go out we can see nothing but blackness on our screen. This makes us feel like we are there with the characters and this subjectivity is what induces fear. The clever moment early in the film where we see Chema through Angela's eyes and hear classical music, then Angela through Chema's eyes and hear heavy metal music adds to the sense of subjectivity and we can definitely witness the film from the characters' perspectives.

This is contrasted powerfully with the moments where we don't s
ee it from a character's perspective, but from the view of a camera lens, as occurs at a number of points in the film. Both are scary in their own way. When in camera lens mode, Amenabar is trying to put across the message of the movie - you will understand the message of the movie as the final scene rolls out.

And that is the most impressive thing about this film. Not only is it powerfully directed, but it also has a terrifyingly realistic moralistic message and is probably exactly what Angela would like to have written in her thesis.

Intelligent, well directed and very very scary - if you only ever watch one foreign spoken film, make it Thesis.

Summary: