The Bride (La Novia)

This strained and often laughable adaptation of Federico García Lorca's play Blood Wedding lacks the sense of dangerous immediacy that drives the stage version with such blinding passion. Director Paula Ortiz chokes on the poetry of Lorca's dialogue, wringing the life out of his language with so much absurd reverence that a viewer can quickly forget the point of any given scene. Set in rural Spain, the story involves an innocent love triangle between two boys and a girl that goes south when the suitors' families are caught up in a blood feud. Years later, the now-grown Novia (Inma Cuesta) is emotionally stuck between her old friends, having been the lover of one and the new bride of the other. A smoldering desire, however, upends everything, causing history to repeat itself. Ortiz derives good performances from Cuesta, as well as some of the older actors who play an exhausted generation either too hopeful or too skeptical about the potential of a marriage to heal everyone's old wounds. But with its agonizingly slow pace and Ortiz's misguided need to push raw emotions to operatic heights, The Bride is ultimately a movie that simply (and fatally) doesn't trust its best assets to deliver on their own. Not recommended. (T. Keogh)