Moon Child sadly failed at the box office, turning Villaronga overnight from boy wonder into unemployable auteur maudit. Several attempted projects during the first half of the 1990s – e.g. adaptations of novels by Mercè Rodoreda (La mort i la primavera, 1986) and Hanns Heinz Ewers (Der Zauberlehrling oder Die Teufelsjäger, 1909) – had proved unrealisable. To keep on working, he accepted this commission and did a decent craftsman’s job with Simenon’s Le passager clandestin, a 1947 mystery set in part on a South Sea island. From this story about the death of a movie distribution magnate, the aftermath was inevitable. Yet Villaronga had to accept what he was handed (plot was never Simenon’s strength). The direction, on the other hand, shows a master at play, especially when there’s no dialogue to deal with and everything depends on visual storytelling or just sheer pictorial splendour.
Film details
Productielanden
France, Spain
Jaar
1995
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2011
Lengte
96'
Medium/Formaat
Betacam SP
Taal
Catalan
Première status
None
Director
Agustí Villaronga
Producer
Agustí Villaronga
Screenplay
Agustí Villaronga, André Graill, Pierre Javaux, based on the novel by Georges Simenon