Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vilagondo, 2011): Spain

Reviewed by Angelica Silva. Viewed at the AFI Film Festival 2011.

The film Extraterrestre was a twisted and hilarious  science fiction. This film successfully mixes the two very different genres perfectly! Director, Nacho Vilagondo had showed one film at the AFI festival previous to this film. His film Time Crimes got very good ratings and Extraterrestre was expected to be the same. Unsurprisingly, it was. The title and cover of this film does lead the critic or viewer audience down a very different idea path. I thought of this movie to have been about creepy little green aliens, lasers and world invasion; cliche stuff. But to my very surprise this was a story very different from its title.

Its a story about infidelity, love, and secrets. I was happily surprised about the twisted plot. Extraterrestre is about a supposed extraterrestrial invasion of a city and the people in it. When they realize that they are the only ones still in town, single Julio (Julian Villagran) finds himself at adulterous, Julia’s (Michelle Jenner)  bedside. Acts of adultery between the two lead her significant other, Carlos (Raul Cimas) in no kind of suspicion when he arrived home to find Julio. He ironically really begins to like Julio. Julia compulsively came up with a story about why Julio was even there.

As the day goes by, their neighbor, Angel (Carlos Areces) ,who has apparently had it out for Julia since they can remember, arrives at their doorstep like usual and joins them for dinner.  Angel becomes suspicious of his beloved Julia and new comer Julio. Frustrated and naive of the consequences, Julio spills the beans about the rendezvous between him and Julia. Well Angel is furious. He threatened Julio and Julia that he would tell her boyfriend Carlos about what he had found out. With other, more important things to worry about, Julia places most of her focus on the reported four mile wide object  floating above their town. Carlos suddenly went on a huge rampage. He had been blowing every thing up in the city with intentions of scaring off what ever was inside the U.F.O. Carlos would call Julia and Julio to check up and tell Julia he loved her.

With Angel a huge pest across the balcony screaming out the accusations of the adultery, throwing hundreds of tennis balls and standing above a huge sign, Julio began to plot a way to get rid of Angel. Carlos came back, realized that Angel was being a bother and while Julio and Julia did not want Angel telling him the secret, all three wanted Angel gone. Carlos and Julio tied up Angel and asked him to leave and not to speak as he left. The threats worked, Angel left.

As the movie went on, suspicion began between Carlos and Angel. Crazed, Carlos believed Angel was actually one of the extraterrestrials. Julio then disappears and is found in his driving machine and Carlos tries shooting it down. Only to find out it is Julio driving in it. He then immediately thinks Julio was one of  “them”. They exchange words and before Carlos can kill him, Julio saves himself by making Carlos believe he was  extraterrestrial but had only good intentions. The movie ends here and I was very satisfied. It was the first movie I watched and ultimately my favorite.