Carla's Song
It used to be that for those who found the prickly social criticism of Mike
Leigh's movies too chirpy, there was always Ken Loach. With such uncompromising
films as Riff-Raff, Raining Stones, and Ladybird,
Ladybird, Loach confronted the injustice and pathos of British lower-class
life with compassion, complexity, and not much in the way of happy endings.
Lately, though, he's expanded his territory beyond the dismay and brimming
humanity of the grim burgs of the British Isles for other times and places, and
the move has softened his lacerating edge and aching ambiguity into
sloganeering.
Such was the case in his foray into the Spanish Civil War, Land and
Freedom, and it's a weakness in his charming but ultimately misconceived
Carla's Song. Robert Carlyle, in between roles in Trainspotting
and The Full Monty, plays George, a Glasgow busdriver with a soft touch
and a rebellious streak. Among the impoverished passengers he gives a break to
is Carla (Oyanka Cabezas), a beautiful Nicaraguan refugee from the ongoing
contra wars who earns her living dancing in the street. Moved as much by her
exotic allure as by concern for her welfare, he finds her a place to live,
nurses her back to health after a suicide attempt, and learns the reason for
her despair -- her boyfriend Antonio (Richard Loza) was captured by the contras
and probably killed.
Although he loves Carla, George magnaminously urges her to go back and find
Antonio -- he even accompanies her. Released from the gritty accents and gray
details of Glasgow, the film dissipates into a bit of a screed, with Carla and
Scott Glenn as a mystery American named Bradley providing much of the
speechifying. It's earnest but unfortunate -- Carla's Song might been
more genuinely tuneful had the pair remained behind to take on the Glasgow
public-transport bureaucracy rather than the CIA. At the Coolidge
Corner.
-- Peter Keough
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