Sevillanas

For `Sevillanas' Carmen Saura had not much option but to use a documentary form, as he simply linked together in no order a dozen flamenco artists - singers, dancers and guitarists - in a bare 50 minutes. The result is short and sweet, but evidently brings no depth to the subject: you might just be watching one of those `canned' ready-made musical programmes which are not much more than several video clips strung together and hurled at you from one of those sky channels.

The film has its moments: above all the duet with Manolo Sanlúcar and Paco de Lucía - which of course was far too brief. One cannot describe the deep empathy that flows between musicians playing this kind of music. You have to watch it and feel it. I will deal more lengthily on this matter in my comments on the biographical documentary of Paco de Lucía in about a week or so when it appears on IMDb. The documentary was shown here together with `Sevillanas' in a thematic programme dedicated to this great musician.

`Sevillanas' is a job half done for those of us who seriously would like a wider exploration of these exceptional musical forms, so unique to Spain, but now so universally acclaimed. Another fifty-odd minutes might have done something to remedy this feeling. In `Calle 54' (qv) Fernando Trueba did a much better job of exploring contemporary Hispanic jazz, an exquisite jewel.