Country: Spain
Genre: Suspense
Director: Mateo Gil
Year: 1999
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Nobody Knows Anybody AKA Nadie Conoce A Nadie is a reasonably competent suspense thriller, but the most entertaining aspect of the movie, at least for me, is how the Spaniards express themselves in the scenes of everyday life that open the film.
Simón Cárdenas (Eduardo Noriega) is a would-be novelist who loathes his writing as being mediocre and worst of all, shallow. He feels he has no life experiences worth relating. He makes his living by creating crossword puzzles for the local newspaper.
Life gets a little less boring when persons unknown start a spree of religiously themed killings during Holy Week, a commemoration of the death of Christ which takes place in Seville and involves numerous processions. Certain clues point in the direction of Simón’s roommate, Sapo (Jordi Mollà). Or is Simón just being paranoid?
Once writer/director Mateo Gil (working from a novel by Juan Bonilla) lets the cat out of the bag halfway through the movie, much of the interest of the plot drains away. Nobody Knows Anybody turns out to be roughly as thoughtful as a typical American suspense thriller, which is to say not much. The buildup would lead you to believe that something more profound or resonant was going to happen.
But never mind. There’s still the opening sequences to entertain. I especially like the bantering back and forth between Simón and his roommate Sapo. Sapo has a cutting, typically Spanish wit which is very entertaining. The scene in which he verbally trashes Holy Week and all it represents is a beautiful piece of dialog and laugh out loud funny.
I also enjoyed Simón’s relationship with Ariadna (Paz Vega).
Let’s face it. I just get a kick out of Spaniards. They’re allergic to bullshit, they’re realists, and yet they’re not mean. They’re cynical when it comes to any kind of authority but between people, they are kind as often as not.
That’s why I was sorry when the personal relationships of the characters got put on the back burner to make room for a more or less conventional thriller plot.
Nonetheless, I would still give a marginal recommendation to Nobody Knows Anybody.
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