THE RAIN, THE SPANISH MOVIE & CHRISTINE

So I swing over to Christine’s house to pick her up. She storms out of the house and then races back in to close Lance’s bedroom window. When she finally rocks up to the car, I throw some Doritos and lollies at her. She storms back into the house to dump them before we jet off.

We had discussed that we would watch "Volver" a Spanish movie in Paddington but looking at the weather we decided that Leichhardt would be the better choice. Besides walking in the rain on Oxford St isn’t ideal right now.

We drive into the coles carpark at Leichhardt when we both start to have a panic attack with the amount of cars in here. We start thinking we aren’t going to be able to get a car spot. This is when I spot some random pregnant chick. I knew something good would come out of her eventually. We manage to follow her to her car spot. The minute she drives out we drive in. Destination arrived!

We jump out of the car and start walking madly to the plaza when we spot several car spots along the way. I had no idea what the stress was or why we were rushing into the plaza. We stroll into the plaza and Christine insists we go to the cinemas to buy the tickets. I’m assuming she scared the movie might sell out. Once the tickets are brought with Christine’s special promo deal we stroll back onto Norton St to find a café to eat.

We spot a café on Norton St and decide to settle here. I can’t remember what the café was called but it’s a small neatly packed café on Norton St. We stroll through the menu to realize that we have to order and pay at the counter. I already know what I want but Christine on the other hand decides to complicate the matter further. So I hand over the money to Christine and she queues up to order.

A few minutes later Christine returns to the table looking a little confused or frustrated. No idea why. Our meals eventually arrive and the waiter plants a chicken schnitzel in front of me while Christine copes a salad in front of her. I’m about to dig into my plate when Christine decides to throw a fuss that her pasta hasn’t arrived yet. We try to track down a waiter to question where the hell her pasta is when we finally get an answer. One of the male waiters indicates that he told Christine at the counter they had no pasta left for the day. At that point I realize that Christine could get violet any minute so I try to scoff down as much food as possible. I’m too hungry and I can’t film and eat at the same time.

To solve the fuss I offer Christine half of my schnitzel. She refuses the offer but takes it anyway. Once the lunch fuss is over we decide to head into the bookshop next door. Within two seconds of being in the bookshop the lights go out. There’s a black out and I’m stuck in the dark with Christine in the middle of a random book shop on Norton St. This cant be good. This only spells trouble. I suggest that we should leave when Christine insists on browsing in the dark.

Christine eventually decides to buy some bookmarks when the lights come back on. We pay for the bookmarks and stroll back into the plaza. The plan is to buy something so I can get my carpark ticket stamped.

I buy TV week from the newsagent and forget to get the ticket stamped. I wanted chewing gum so we head to coles. We get the chewing gum when we spot this woman outside of Michel’s with some pudding. Christine and I decide to have a bite, well I have a bite while Christine practically eats the plate in front of the woman. We have to race off as she practically pulls the plate off the table while grabbing the pudding.

Now we need something to wash that down with when we notice a juice demonstration thing. We have a sip and decide we need the next best thing – We hit a bar.

We enter a bar and it’s only like 2pm. Were practically the only ones at the bar. We order some wine and settle down in some booth near the door to drink and watch the rain. I start flicking through my TV week to realize this magazine sucks. I only wanted to read why Sally was finally leaving Home and Away. This is when Christine decides to pull out her magazine. It’s some girly magazine that she only brought because she gets a free makeup bag with it.

We sit in the booth drinking our wine and reading the best techniques used in the bedroom and all that shit until we decide to scull our drinks and head over to JB HI’s for a drink, I mean for shopping. We spend 20 minutes in JB HI’s floating around like prostitutes when we finally rush out to the cinemas.



We sit ourselves in the cinemas and start to watch Volver starring Penelope Cruz. The movie’s warm, emotional and quite touching at times. The most significant point to this movie is the kissing. The major planting of kisses on the cheeks throughout the movie plays a very significant part to the outcome of their affection for one another.

The title "Volver" means, "Coming Back" and indeed this is what this movie is about. Coming back to finish unfinished business and getting closure. Some people are good at getting closure where as some need to go back to Mykonos a third time for closure and hence the kissing.

The plot centers around a small town in Madrid Spain where Penelope Cruz lives with her low life husband in some run down apartment with prostitute’s as her neighbors and friends. Penelope Cruz’s onscreen mother Irene was killed in a house fire with her husband but returns as a ghost to her daughters to rectify what she couldn’t in her life.

The movie has several twists and soon turns out to be more like Hidden Intentions (HI) than anything but all in all without giving away the whole movie I would have to say this is indeed a movie I really enjoyed. I didn’t think I would enjoy this movie as much as I did. It was an extremely long movie, almost two and a half-hours but it felt like an hour in the cinemas.

For anyone that hasn’t watched this movie I highly recommend it. Oh and before I forget the shot structure in this movie is EXCELLENT!!!!! One to watch out for is the looking down from a ceiling view of Penelope washing the dishes in a low cut top.