Common Wealth

Colour, 35mm
Spain, 2000, 106 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

A film about neighbourly terror combining claustrophobic tension and domestic violence, and containing a healthy dose of human tragedy with plenty of black humour. An attractive forty-year-old named Julia sells flats for a realty company. She longs for a better life and one day her prayers are answered. She finds 300 million pesetas hidden in a suitcase under the kitchen tiles in the flat of a deceased tenant; unsurprisingly she resolves not to turn the money in. Indeed, she’s willing to do anything for it – but so are the other characters in the film. Julia is left with no other option than to face the wrath of a very special group: fourteen neighbours, headed by an unscrupulous civil servant, who have not waited twenty years for the lucky lottery winner living in the penthouse to die, only to have their hopes dashed by an interloper. In the end this film, lacking all inhibitions, tells us that we’re all neighbours, contemptible and wretched, it’s just that only some of us admit it.

About the director

Álex de la Iglesia (b. 1965, Bilbao) graduated in philosophy at university in Deusto, drew comics, acted, wrote screenplays, and directed. Filmography: Acción mutante, El día de la Bestia, Perdita Durango, Muertos de risa, La comunidad. He also wrote the book Payasos en la lavadora.