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“The Delights of the Garden,” the latest feature of Fernando Colomo whose films have captured memorably the humane contradictions of a Spain adapting to a modern age, has been picked up for worldwide sales by Latido Films, one of Spain’s foremost sales agents.
Latido, which also picked up Colomo’s 2021 comedy “Polyamory for Dummies, will introduce footage of “The Delights of a Garden” (“Las delicias del jardín”) to buyers at next week’s Cannes Film Festival Marché du Film.
As in many of Colomo’s films, from his milestone debut “Paper Tigers” (1977), a bitter-sweet comedy of manners set in the run-up to the Spain’s 1977 general election, its first in 40 years, “Delights” captures the protagonist in crisis, adapting with difficulty to a new context.
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Here it is not Spain’s sudden modernity (“Paper Tigers”) nor an bewildering New York (“Skyline,” 1984), nor new sexual modes (“Polyamory for Dummies”) nor an ancient Andalusian village (“South from Granada,” 2003) but rather the onset of old age, fading professional fame and return of a prodigal son which allows the director to explore another leitmotif: the culture clash.
In it, Fermín García Lopez, a well regarded abstract artist attends the announcement of a million-dollar competition to create a reinterpretation of Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”
Fermín initially backs off. Bosch “was like a messenger of time, from the court of Philip II to the present day,” the competition presenter says in an early scene of the film. Fermin, however, feels behind the times, an abstract expressionist, while younger artists paint elevator shafts or design a AI dog which reviews art works.
Also, Fermín’s painting hand has begin to suffer a tremor.
When, however, his bank account is embargoed and his son, a figurative painter, returns from India, he begins to reconsider the competition as he refashions his relationship with his son.
Colomo’s twenty-fourth feature, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is co-written with son Pablo Colomo. The two also star in the film in what Colomo calls “a kind of auto-fiction.”
Feeling out of touch, and out of sorts, Colomo’s protagonist give full reign to his hallmark in humor: character-driven bathos.
“Of my 23 features, my favourites are ‘Skyline,’ shot in New York in 1983, and “Isla Bonita,” which I filmed over 2013-14 in Menorca. In the first, Antonio Resines was my alter ego. In the second, I played the protagonist. Taking the risk, which cost me some arm-twisting, I discovered I could direct the film from the inside, and a new world opened up to me,” said Colomo.
“I’ve written the screenplay with Pablo and what I’m interested in showing is our different worlds: Different takes on politics, feminism, love and relationships and the difficult world of art and its speculative market.”
Starring Carmen Machi (“Piggy,” “La Mesías,” “Celeste”), “The Delights of the Garden” is produced by Comba Films and Telespan, backed by Prime Video in Spain.
Beatriz de la Gándara, who has produced Colomo films from 1994’s “Alegre ma non troppo,” an early film starring Penélope Cruz, once more serves as producer, alongside José Luis Povedano and Colomo.
“We had been following this project from the very beginning, but when we finally had the chance to see it on a big screen we just could not stop laughing, we were totally captured by this characters and their troubles,” said Latido Films head Antonio Saura.
“Colomo has directed what for me is his best film in years – and I like his movies a lot – he is brilliant as an actor, the story is so intelligent and witty it is hard not to want to know more and more, and the actors are just amazing!… Charming, light, funny, pure entertainment. It was an immediate ‘we need this film’ reaction. It is a privilege to work with Fernando Colomo, Beatriz de la Gándara, and the team they have assembled, old friends of mine but very young creators at heart,” he added.
