132. Spanish director José Luis Cuerda’s film “La lengua de las mariposas” (Butterfly Tongues/Butterfly) (1999): Touching and thought-provoking cinema
C uerda? Who is that? When you read about modern cinema from Spain most critics seem to talk of Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar , and Alejandro Amenábar. But rarely do you come across the name José Luis Cuerda in informed discussions on the cinema of Spain. And yet Cuerda’s Butterfly Tongues is one film this critic would recommend, if someone wanted to see a fine movie from Spain. If someone wanted details that give this movie additional credibility: the music in the film is by well-known Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, the lead actor is Fernando Fernán Gómez (a thespian who has appeared in over 200 movies made in the Spanish language and has won the Best Actor award twice at the Berlin film festival and once at the Venice Film Festival), and the original tales on which the movie is based are written by the respected novelist Manuel Rivas. As you watch the movie unfold, you are reminded of delicate strokes of Ermanno Olmi’s Italian masterpiece The Tree of Wooden C...