Search - El Perque de tot Plegat (What's It All About) on DVD

The Title Says It All

H. F. Corbin | ATLANTA, GA USA | 12/15/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The director of this Spanish language film has a Sisyphean task from the opening scenes, when a man unsuccessfuly attempts to get a rock to talk to him, to the ending 90 long minutes later when another gentleman goes mushroom picking and discovers under a toadstool a red-capped, white-bearded gnome. And then another gnome. (It reads better than it watches.) In between are sections labeled "Honesty," "Sincerity," "Submission," "Competition," "Passion," "Ego," "Jealousy,"Doubt," etc. These vignettes are based on short stories by the Catalan writer Quim Monzo and appear to be making statements about love and sex, two topics that ought to interest most viewers although it doesn't happen here. Part of the problem is that several sequences strung together seldom work, particularly when you are dealing with different languages and subtitles.



There are glimpses of the beautiful and exotic Barcelona and mildly amusing moments at times in the film. In the segment "Jealousy," for instance, the man is upset with his lover because she loves his penis more than she loves him. The movie convinced me that Mr. Monzo is a good writer, in spite of this often dull translation of his stories to the screen, no easy task. Neither is pushing a stone up a hill or writing comedy."

Esrablishing Contact

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 10/25/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

""What's It All About?"



Establishing Contact



Amos Lassen



Set in Barcelona, Spain. "What's It All About?" looks at how to establish contact. The main character is seen trying to get a stone to speak and he ponders how to make contact so that he can get a response. The movie breaks into a series of episodes each with its own title--Willpower, Wisdom, Honesty, Sincerity, Submission, Competition, Passion, Consensus, Egocentrism, Spite, Desire, Jealousy, Love, Trust and Doubt. Each episode then consists of a story where content and form are represented in unison.

Directed by Ventura Pons, we see contradictions, doubts, frustrations, loneliness and disorientation. All that can really be said, aside from that this is an excellent film, is that it is an experience to see and will lead you to new levels of though and consideration about yourself.

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