Content area
Full Text
Dir. Cesc Gay. Spain-Canada. 2015. 108 mins.
A genuine, likeable, loose-limbed buddy dramedy about impending death, Truman is Catalan director Cesc Gay's first title with true export potential – despite the fact that its big poster draw, the pairing of Argentinian leading man Ricardo Darin with one of Pedro Almodovar's favourite character actors, Javier Camara, will play mostly to Spanish-speaking audiences. The film's one major defect is the fact that in attempting to underplay the schmaltz factor by showing how uncommunicative men deal with emotional trauma, the opposite effect is sometimes achieved – with every close-up on repressed male tearfulness held just a beat too long.
But that's only an occasional distraction in a film that wins us back as often as it turns us off, thanks mainly to some fine scriptwriting and finer acting in a series of perceptive comedy-tinged scenes that circle around the theme of how friends, family and colleagues deal with the idea that someone they know, like, love or dislike has just a few weeks or months leftto live. Playing to an appreciative home crowd at...