Vasil

If you like films with action, spectacle and high drama then this is probably not going to be a film you'd like. Nothing much seems to happen. The characters spend their time drinking coffee, playing chess and playing bridge. Most of them are retired and live to a small, fixed routine.

Vasil is a Bulgarian who has left Bulgaria for Spain. It is never made entirely clear why he has done this, though it seems he is looking for a better life. Maureen, an Irish woman who has settled in Spain, asks her friend a retired professor to put Vasil up until he can get a job and get settled, as a favour to her. The professor agrees but takes no interest in Vasil and finds out nothing about him. His daughter berates him for being unfriendly and self-centred and demands that he arranges for her to meet Vasil so she can get to know him. She is about the only open-minded character in the film, apart from Vasil himself. Vasil turns out to be an unassuming, likeable man with a few interesting talents but, except right at the end of the film, we only see him from the other characters point of view and they never engage with him fully. The film turns into a representation of how people generally are ungenerous, suspicious and judgemental towards "foreigners" and "immigrants" and can't handle people with different lifestyles and dreams to their own. Maureen is broader minded than the rest of them because she was married to an embassador and has lived in a few different countries. But she is unable to prevail against the others' narrowness.

This film is in no way boring and repays close watching. I said nothing much seems to happen but you realise that what is happening is an interplay of rivalries, jealousies and relationship failures between the characters, some of which subtly change as a result of their meeting Vasil.

I saw this film (Spanish dialogue with English subtitles) at a private showing for staff of GMAC in Manchester. I don't know where, or whether, it is being shown anywhere else.