GAUDI AFTERNOON

Susan Seidelman, Spain 2001, feature, 93 min, 35mm, English, Dutch subtitles

Gaudi Afternoon is directed by Susan Seidelman who first brought Madonna to the screen in Desperately Seeking Susan. Shot in Barcelona with an all-star cast including the formidable Judy Davis, Oscar winning Marcia Gay Harden, Lili Taylor, and Juliette Lewis, Gaudi Afternoon also features one of Spain's finest comedic actors Maria Barranco (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down).

Seidelman’s bases the film on Barbara Wilson's mystery novel and calls it a "gender bending detective story about alternative families." Davis describes it as a "comedy about displaced people." It is all of this and much, much more. With a diverse set of characters, Seidelman brings us a film that makes us look at ourselves in whole new ways.
Davis plays the edgy Cassandra, an itinerant translator who describes home as where she plugs in her laptop. We meet her as she struggles with the translation of a novel about a mother and a daughter. Distracted by her own relationship demons, her late rent, and the cacophony from her landlady Carmen's (Maria Barranco) household, Cassandra is at a crossroad. Then a mysterious woman Frankie (Marcia Gay Harden) comes by to convince Cassandra to be her private eye to find Frankie's disappeared husband. In need of cash, Cassandra says yes and soon finds herself in a world that appears to be entirely differently than what she had expected.

The film explores Seidelman’s favourite storyline of baby boomers from the middle class trying to find meaning in their lives but most of all end up confronting their own bourgeois upbringing.




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