SALVADOR (PUIG ANTICH) (Spain)

The titular character is the last person to be sentenced to death in western Europe. It happened, naturally, at the conclusion of the Franco regime in Spain, the last country in the region to embrace democracy. The film opens immediately after Salvador (Daniel Bruhl, who was born in Barcelona and speaks unaccented Spanish and Catalan) was brought to jail. He meets with his lawyer Arau (Tristan Ulloa) and recounts in flashback the last three years of his life. At the beginning of the 1970s, the MIL, a left-wing group made up of a handful of Spanish college students and French militants, commits a series of robberies in Catalonia to fund the more radical sectors of the workers' movement. At first, their success gives the young, giddy MIL members a feeling of invulnerability. Their actions come to a sudden end in September 1973 when members of the Socio-Political Brigade set a trap for two of the group's key members. During the arrest, there is a shootout in which a police inspector dies. Salvador is seriously injured and, after a time in hospital, is sent to Modelo prison in Barcelona to await trial. Salvador depicts the camaraderie between the friends/partners-in-arms and the protagonist's intermittent family life and romantic liaisons.

Director Manuel Huerga (Antartida, Gaudi) maintains a fast pace during the fist half of the film via quick edits and skillful deployment of handheld cameras. The vibrant, saturated colors give way to a palatte of somber grays and blues during the last hour of Salvador. Arau and Salvador's sisters race against the clock to save him from "the garrote", Franco's very brutal method of execution. However, on 20 December 1973, an ETA bomb kills Admiral Carrero Blanco, a high government official. Huerga's film proposes that Salvador Puig Antich became the scapegoat for a sector of Franco's regime bent on revenge. As Salvador prepares to die, he develops a close relationship with Jesus (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a prison guard who moves from brutality to empathy as he gets to know the young militant. All the efforts to save his life, including an improbable and bizarre escape attempt, are in vain and Puig Antich is executed on March 2, 1974. Towards the end, Salvador (Puig Antich) becomes somewhat repetitive and sentimental. The filmmakers' aim to highlight the tragedy and gravity of the event is commendable, but I find that the change in pace serves to lessen the film's impact and diffuse its undeniable power. Salvador (Puig Antich) received 11 Goya nominations and won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.