COWS WEARING GLASSES

'Cows wearing glasses'....yup you read correctly, that's the title..interesting choice don't you think?
The title instantly attracted my curiosity! Urging me to see what this film is all about. 

This 2014 comedy-drama was directed by Alex Santiago Pérez and is set in the region of Puerto Rico. The film is 93 minutes in length; the actors all speak in spanish but there is english subtitles. 

Marcelino, the protagonist of the film, is a bitter, eccentric old man, who teaches a Human Figure Class and is constantly seen as being insultive and brutally honest with his students; what you see is what you get with him. Marcelino refers to himself as a master painter and a line from the film which he said, that really stayed with me was, "in order to be an artist, you have to risk being honest at all times." Truthfulness is something that Marcelino strongly believes in and stands by.  

Finding out from multiple doctors that he's on the brink of losing his sight, Marcelino knows that he must get his affairs in order, mostly importantly his relationship with his daughter, Isabel. Isabel, a writer of self-help books wants absolutely nothing to do with her father and blames him for abandoning her as a child, for his drunken behaviour instilling so much fear in her as a little girl, and for beating her mother and being a horrible husband, all of which disrupted her life profoundly. 

Marcelino tries and tries to obtain forgiveness from his daughter, but to no avail. This film is a man's emotional journey to correct his many wrongs before the inevitable happens. 


I truly enjoyed the intimate story that this film shared with audiences. Overall the film seems to have been received very well here in Trinidad; I asked a couple people who saw the film to comment on whether they liked or disliked the film and nearly all the reviews were positive, applauding the director for a job well done, for a story that's so raw and realistic and last but not least for the actors who played their roles beautifully. 

Some of the comments given on the film were, 
"Oh man, this film was beautiful, sad but beautiful."

"The ending really got me! Such a tragic story."

"The actor who played the role of Marcelino did an exceptional job."

"My first Puerto Rican film and I loved it!"

"I feel the same way that the actor does about pigeons."
(For those of you who have not yet seen the film, Marcelino hated pigeons, considered them to be one of God's seven mistakes.