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Sólo Mía
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Directed by Javier Balaguer
The feature debut of writer/director Javier Balaguer, Sólo Mía opens on a scene of a relationship gone terribly awry. Some type of violence is occurring off-camera. Soon we see that Angela (Paz Vega of Sex and Lucia) has Joaquín (Sergi López of Dirty Pretty Things) bound and gagged. "Have you ever tried, just once, to see my side?" she asks him. The film jumps back in time, showing us the history of their tumultuous relationship. On the first day of her job as a receptionist at an ad agency, Angela meets Joaquín, who turns out to be her boss. He charms her, and after a whirlwind courtship, they get married. Angela quickly gets pregnant, and Joaquín insists that she quit smoking and quit her job. He wants to control her; she will not be controlled. Their arguments grow more heated. One day, when he finds a pack of cigarettes she's hidden away, he smacks her. He quickly apologizes, and she eventually forgives him, but things just get worse. He gets a promotion at work, where he works with Alejandro (Alberto Jiménez of El Bola). Joaquín gets more and more stressed out about what's going on at the office. One night, after their anniversary party, while their baby girl is at Angela's mother's (María José Alfonso), Joaquín drunkenly assaults Angela. Andrea (Elvira Mínguez), Alejandro's wife, eventually persuades Angela to leave Joaquín, but Joaquín is not ready to give up on their relationship, or give up his daughter. With the legal system unresponsive to her concerns, Angela is forced to take bold action to protect herself. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
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Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
lost interest.
Javier Balaguer's Sólo Mía opens with confusion and chaos, befitting the potboiler thriller it never quite becomes. This is to the filmmakers' credit. While the two leads (Paz Vega and Sergi López) are more beautiful than average, the film is, for most of its length, a brutally straightforward and well-played drama of quotidian domestic terror. Vega effectively conveys both Angela's fierce independence and her naïveté, while López portrays Joaquín with enough subtlety that we can recognize his humanity. This makes him more engaging and more disturbing than the monstrous cardboard villains in cheesy Hollywood thrillers on this subject matter, like Enough and Sleeping With the Enemy. Unfortunately, after introducing us to these believable characters and realistically delineating the frustrating complexity of Angela's situation, Balaguer reverts back to genre pyrotechnics for the film's well-staged, but implausible, climax, and its silly melodramatic postscript, neither of which would be out of place in the above-mentioned Hollywood flicks. Perhaps this is the filmmaker's way of engaging a Spanish audience presumed to be less receptive to a tale of patriarchal abuse. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
 

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