Glacial pace makes IT SNOWS IN BENIDORM feel like its title should be altered to It’s Slow in Benidorm.
Timothy Spall plays Peter, a man of little ambition who has worked in a bank in Manchester all his life.
After being forced to retire because he would rather loan money to people who need it rather than those who don’t, he decides to go to Benidorm to visit his brother Daniel who he hasn’t seen in twelve years.
When Peter arrives in Benidorm, Spain’s answer to Surfer’s Paradise, his brother isn’t there to meet him. After futile phone calls, Peter goes to Daniels’ apartment block where the concierge after consultation with the cleaner informs him that Daniel hasn’t been seen for three days.
After settling in to his brother’s apartment, he is confronted by Alex, a handsome woman who tells him she is Daniel’s partner in the Benidorm Club, a kitsch cabaret. She is also a performer there, in an act she describes as “pulling pearls out of her cunt.”
Born from an abandoned documentary about a controversial building, the “Lugano Tower”, a 500 ft. skyscraper, considered the tallest residential building in Spain, IT SNOWS IN BENIDORM blends the factual with a rich, imaginative, perplexing narrative.
In 2007, only days after its inauguration, “Lugano Tower” started to show signs of decline. Gas leaks, water leaks, broken pipes, flooding from the sewers, doors that didn’t close, elevators that were permanently out of order… There were complaints, residents’ associations at loggerheads with the construction company, residents at loggerheads with each other… Sound familiar, Sydney?
Writer director Isabel Coixet takes the bare bones of the fact and fleshes out a bizarre and macabre story of corrupt councils, complacent cops, deceitful developers and Russian investors, and invests it with a depth the personality through a series of fascinating characters, not least being the mysterious and enigmatic, Alex, played with alluring aloofness by Sarita Choudhury.
IT SNOWS IN BENIDORM is a slow cooked meal that takes its time, sometimes frustratingly so, but it is oddly satisfying in the end, providing the viewer with a puzzle to ponder, memories to chew on.
