Work in Progress

Colour, 35mm
Spain, France, 2001, 125 min
Section: Variety Critics´ Choice

Synopsis

As unsung at home as Victor Erice, the helmer to whom he clearly owes a sizable debt, Jose Luís Guerín is one of the more idiosyncratic Spanish talents at work. Built around an idea which looks doomed on paper but which works brilliantly on screen - to record the construction of a building - "Work in Progress" is willfully offbeat but the docu´s potential pretentiousness is beautifully held in check by its warm, embracing humanity. Only Guerín´s fourth pic in 18 years, "Work" is a craftily edited summary of 110 hours of footage recorded over 18 months during the building of an apartment block in Barcelona´s El Chino district. There is no voiceover explaining who the people are, and no one speaks to camera - what they don´t tell us about themselves is as interesting as what they do. Jonathan Holland