Mondays in the Sun

Mondays in the Sun played to rave reviews and broke box office records when it was released in its homeland of Spain.The film, directed by Fernando Leon de Aranoa was Spain's official Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language film in 2003, and won 5 out of the 8 Goya Awards (Spanish Oscars) for which it was nominated, including Best Film and Best Director.

It’s the story of six friends struggling to cope in the wake of a shipyard closure several years earlier in a depressed northern Spanish coastal city. It’s not based on a real story but it reflects on all situations in which a town’s livelihood has often relied upon a workforce tied to a leading industry which going bust, causes major heartache. Many will recall Brassed Off’s take on the collapse of the mining industry and its effect on a brass band and those that liked that film will have sympathy with this portrait of men finding that no matter how much they demean themselves, sometimes still the chance to work eludes them and with that, goes their sense of pride.

Fans of human stories – the sort often championed by directors like Ken Loach will appreciate the poignant, bittersweet approach and leader of the pack in the cast, is the ever-watchable Javier Bardem (recently nominated for a Golden Globe for his part in The Sea Inside) and he is ably backed up by actor Luis Tosar (equally prominent in the excellent Spanish film Take My Eyes).

Director Fernando Leon de Aranoa shows a compassionate eye – at times you’d like to see more drive, more anger from these men, more of a sense of purpose to either alter the status quo or to fight their corner but that’s easy to say from a position of comparative ease. What particularly drives this film is that you can feel the frustration of a whole neighbourhood where the heart has been torn out of it with the closing of its shipbuilding heart – the feeling of loss is palpable and as a social drama with a point, Mondays in the Sun is stirringly effective, if arguably also a little tied to its central point.

Matt Arnoldi