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Critics Consensus: It has a beautiful cast, but Little Ashes suffers from an uneven tone and a surplus of unintentionally silly moments.
Critic Consensus: It has a beautiful cast, but Little Ashes suffers from an uneven tone and a surplus of unintentionally silly moments.
All Critics (70) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (53) | DVD (1)
A bravely earnest and gauzy bit of biography.
Beltran, for his part, makes a solidly believable Garcia Lorca. The problem is with the man with whom he's obsessed. In Pattinson's performance, we never see what Garcia Lorca sees in Dali.
Little Ashes is stylish enough to beguile and bold enough to provoke, but it's not bright enough to illuminate.
Even cinematographer Adam Suschitzky's richly textured and resonantly toned cityscapes and rural scenes can't make up for a flawed script and weak performances in what might have been a powerful historical drama.
What's intended to be a daring look at repressed sexuality, three-ways and all, has the dramatic heft of a true-love comic book.
Better to seek out these artists' works firsthand than to settle for this tame rehash, pretty as it may be.
Matthew McNulty is commanding as Bunuel, but the sensitive Javier Beltran consistently steals the show as the tormented Lorca.
It feels as though Morrison and Goslett are trying too hard to emulate the work of their subjects.
The drawcard of Robert ''Twilight'' Pattinson as Dali is a mixed blessing for the filmmakers, given how ill-at-ease he is in the role. Javier Beltran, as Garcia Lorca, cast as the heroic centre of the film, cuts a more confident figure.
A snapshot of an insight into the life of Salvador Dali, one of the most complex artists in history and it intensifies rather than satisfies our curiosity about him
limps along about as lifelessly as one of Dali's melting clocks
Beltran tries to give this flimsy nonsense some weight, but Brits McNulty and Pattinson's attempts at a Spanish accent are woeful.
A disappointing effort that doesn't develop well the personalities of its three main characters and is unable to make us see what Lorca could possibly find so attractive in Pattinson's Dalí. Besides, it suffers from irregular performances and some cheesy, embarrassing moments.
Super Reviewer
'Little Ashes' follows the (at the time illegal) romance between famed painter Dali and poet Lorca. Dali is the main protaginist being portrayed by Robert Pattinson, who does a very good job despite the occasional lapse in his accent and proves that Twilight isn't his only role. The story is well scripted with mostly good dialogue which sometimes is lost in the muddle of other noises and occasionally just becomes unhearable. The music however fits nicely and although doesn't boost the film still makes a fine addition. The mise-en-scene in the film is very nice to look at despite one scene which I'm almost positive was a greenscreen, apart from that everything was beautifully shot amd framed in such a way that not only shows of the actors but the scenery. Overall, not a great film but an enjoyayble one, it could of done with being 10 minutes shorter as it seemed like some moments were crammed in but for the most part it's an interesting insight into Dali.
Since I began writing reviews regularly, I've found myself becoming aware while I'm watching a film that I will have to have something intelligent to say about it. If I am not enjoying a film, I feel that I have to come up with a viable reason why. This was difficult for Little Ashes. I found myself complete unengaged with the film, and it was difficult to pinpoint why or what the filmmakers could have done to fix the problem. The best that I can determine is that the film frequently wanders. Is this a film about boys becoming men at school? Sorta. Is it about homosexuality? KInda. Is it a political drama? I guess. Even sprawling biopics generally have a central theme or character that pushes them forward, and we see no such thing in the story of Garcia Lorca and Dali. And Robert Pattinson. Clearly, I find Edward Cullen insufferable and the Twilight movies banal. But I had no great hatred for the actor until now. He is truly, truly awful in this film. I can't remember a single action that seemed motivated, and there is little reason to believe that Garcia Lorca would love/obsess over Pattinson's Dali. It is true that Salvador Dali often turned his life and his behavior into a twentieth century Diogenes, but we don't see satire in Pattinson's Dali; we see dumb schtick. Overall, this film is chore.
I was not expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. There is a real love story there, but because of the times and reservations is where the conflict comes in. All acting was pretty good but the stand out performance was Javier Beltan. I do not know how historically correct it is, but I enjoyed seeing the conflict and struggle for gays in this time period in Spain.
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