good back-story, and good acting

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A title like MONDAYS IN THE SUN (LOS LUNES AL SOL) is misleading. It leads the potential viewer, also called a cinema buff, to believe he or she is going to witness something brimming with life and love and laughter -- something that incites a walk down memory lane, like AMARCORD or something. It's the equivalent of a delicately laid-out trap that has lovely pansies and gardenias but hides a black hole in which not even hope can emerge. See, this is the cheerful story of some down-and-out working-class men who find themselves unemployed. Of course, like most unemployed men, they make great strides to remedy the situation: they drink, they reminisce, they drink some more, they brood, they talk, they drink, they brood and reminisce and reminisce until all you have is one big fat essay on the Art of Stagnancy.True, I know and am fully aware that all realities were not created equal. Some people fight to come out of their situation -- as dire as it may seem -- and even though the road to success from the bottom of the pit might be rather bumpy, they triumph through perseverance. These men -- played by Javier Bardem and Luis Tosar in lead roles -- come across as whiners who would rather do as little as possible and moan about their inability to get ahead. At least, Tosar's character has a little more plausibility: his wife is now the breadwinner which besmirches his own masculinity (and for anyone unaware of Spanish culture, a man's machismo is everything), and the scene where he blows it for her when she goes to a bank to apply for a loan is all too real. It's quiet, it's tense, it's the essence of what destroys a marriage that is now on uneven grounds.LOS LUNES AL SOL is flawed by its own Neo-Realist approach to a subject such as unemployment, but denies its characters the possibility of coming through by making them escapist slobs. There is one moment of devastating horror and it happens twice: one of the men's wives has left (purportedly on an extended vacation). He holds on to the illusion she will return. Bardem takes the friend home who is too drunk to make it alone and realizes his friend is much worse off than any of them thought. It's a grim reality, to see that this is what these men's lives are worth -- abandonment and the inability to cope with reality -- and the best moment of the entire film. However, despite this powerful message, LOS LUNES AL SOL runs too long and is too plodding to sustain its weight, which is heavy.

The Spanish ensemble film Los lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun deals with a group of former workers who lost their jobs after the factory had to close. Every day they meet in a pub, worrying about future, money and problems in the family.The film has great actors and the director does a terrific job in leading their performances in the most effective way. De Aranoa seems to have a perfect sense for timing, manifested in an inconspicuous but efficient cut. The well pointed, rough and bare dialogues come along as a subtle social criticism. De Aranoa surely can rely on his affectionate, wonderful figuration of the truly believable characters, and the shining, utterly charismatic Javier Bardem proves in here again that he is the doubtlessly best Spanish actor today.

Almost nothing happens in this film, which is an important part of the message, which is after all about the boring life of the unemployed. There is comedy (especially Javier Bardem as the rebellious, witty Santa does his best in this department), there is drama, but the few really good ideas in this film are drawn out over too long a time. This works to the film's detriment, creating a plodding, slow, experience where a piece of about two thirds its length would have been interesting. Again, I do realize that the slowness is trying to be part of its message; still, adding scene after scene of essentially the same troubles of an unemployed life was not a good idea in my opinion.

This is a great movie about middle aged men being put out to pasture. The movie actually is a film rather than a verbal story glued to a bunch of special effects. The story is told by the focus of the camera, the objects pictured, and a tilt of a head, rather than by a bunch of talking. This is what film is about. Thank God the Europeans didn't forget it. To a large extent, American filmakers have. If you like movies about the human experience that give you fresh insight, see this movie. It is to film what "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is to poetry. Except that the main character struggles to remain a strong and virile man in the face of emasculaing business, while Prufrock was more of a frightened person in the face of discovering his mediocrity.