After a long period of absence, living in large and anonymous cities, a poet, Juan Ramón (Simón Martin) , suffered a mental breakdown and depression, so he stayed hospitalised in France and Madrid, but then he returns to the village of his birth , Moguer, Huelva, there he finds happiness through , remembering his childhood ; the friendship of a small donkey, Platero , and a free spirited girl, Aguedilla (Maria Cuadra). Juan Ramón lived for a significant period in Moguer, where he wrote ¨Platero y Yo¨ , it is a 1914 Spanish prose poem written by Juan Ramón Jiménez. The book is one of the most popular works by Jiménez, and unfolds around a writer and his eponymous donkey, Platero ("silvery"). Platero is described as a "small donkey, a soft, hairy donkey: so soft to the touch that he might be said to be made of cotton, with no bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes are hard like two black crystal scarabs."
The picture relies heavily on the relationship between Juan Ramón Jiménez middlingly performed by the unknown Simon Martin and a free-spirit teen , finely played by Maria Cuadra. They're well accompanied by a prestigious support cast , such as : Pepe Calvo, Carlos Casaravilla, Roberto Camardiel, Elisa Ramírez, María Francés and Antonio Prieto . And of course , about Platero that remains a symbol of tenderness, purity and naiveté, and is used by the author as a means of reflection about the simple joys of life, memories, and various characters and their ways of life. As an adult, the film develops a stirring vignette of village life and the nostalgia of the author, then recovering from depression, as he remembers happier times from his infancy , his relation to intimate Platero and the naive Maria Cuadra , including village gossips .
Based on biographic elements , Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958) was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which in the Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistic purity". One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the concept of "pure poetry". The main subjects of many of his other poems were music and color, which, at times, he compared to love or lust. He celebrated his home region in his prose poem about a writer and his donkey called Platero and I (1914). In 1916 he and Spanish-born writer and poet Zenobia Camprubí were married in the United States. Zenobia became his indispensable companion and collaborator. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he and Zenobia went into exile in Puerto Rico, where he settled in 1946. Jiménez was hospitalized for eight months due to another deep depression. He later became a Professor of Spanish Language and Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. His literary influence on Puerto Rican writers strongly marks the works of Giannina Braschi, René Marqués, Aurora de Albornoz, and Manuel Ramos Otero. The university named a building on campus and a writing program in his honor. He was also a professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. While living in Coral Gables he wrote "Romances de Coral Gables". In addition, he was a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland, which renamed Jimenez Hall for him in 1981. In 1956, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature; two days later, his wife died of ovarian cancer. Jiménez never recovered from the emotional devastation, and he died two years afterwards, on 29 May 1958, in the same clinic where his wife had died. Both are buried in his hometown of Moguer, Spain. Although he was primarily a poet, Jiménez' prose work Platero y yo (1917; "Platero and I"; Platero is a donkey) sold well in Latin America and in translation won him popularity in the USA. He also collaborated with his wife in the translation of the Irish playwright John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1920). His poetic output during his life was immense. Among his better known works are Sonetos espirituales 1914-1916 (1916; "Spiritual Sonnets, 1914-15"), Piedra y cielo (1919; "Stones and Sky"), Poesía, en verso, 1917-1923 (1923), Poesía en prosa y verso (1932; "Poetry in Prose and Verse"), Voces de mi copla (1945; "Voices of My Song"), and Animal de fondo (1947; "Animal at Bottom".
There're various adaptations about ¨Platero y Yo¨: In 1960, the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed a suite of music for guitar with narrator based on the stories in the book. In 1968, the Spanish film director Alfredo Castellón adapted the book into a movie by the same title. The guitarist and composer Eduardo Sainz de la Maza also wrote a suite of eight pieces for guitar based on Platero Y Yo, which bears the same title. A theatrical adaptation has been written by Josep-Antoni Garí, published in the literary magazine Ex Tempore and presented at the literary evening of the Circle of Writers of the United Nations.
