As we left the Shaw Lido cinema after the omy.com movie premiere event, I have spotted a huge poster that I could not take my eyes away from. It is a Spanish movie. What a coincidence. In our last Spanish class, our replacement teacher Gloria was asking us if there are Spanish movies playing in Singapore. The rest said no. I insisted we have, from time to time. If this movie was not R21 rated, I would recommend “The Hanged Man” in our next class. Just that we do have some young students whom I have no idea how young they are.
The English version of the poster, I remember, has three marketing words. I cannot remember the first world. Something and then passion, and crime. Is it horror, Cynthia and TK asked after I booked the tickets for the three of us. I surely hoped not. They warned me that if this was a horror movie or was as boring as that Spanish movie, I would be banned from picking a movie title.
Hash!
Fortunately, “The Hanged Man” is a good movie. The actress Clara Lago has such big eyes that remind me of the French actress Audrey Tautou. And she acts exceptionally well. The story begins in a Spanish city Gerona back in 1989 when two teenagers became best friends after a rather mischievous incident. The boy and the girl got into an unlocked car one day, messed around with the gearbox and handbrake, and crashed the car onto another car. To cover up the incident, the boy crashed onto a short brick wall on his bike, made a mess out of his head with blood all over his face. When the girl took him back to their parents who were at the car incident scene, the rest of the crowd immediately forgot about the cars and took care of the kids.
The story is then fast-forwarded to a later time when the two best friends were interlocked in more dark incidents, more cover-ups. It is a time when the both fell in love and shared common secrets. It is a time when the boy became more obsessed with the girl, willing to give his life up for the girl while the girl was growing out of this teenage love affair. The story is dark, almost too heartbreaking to watch. Some may wonder if the ending is at all logical. I welcome a film that does not blur the moral boundary. On that note, I endorse the ending however improbable it is. It is a movie that I would like to add to my personal film collection.