I watched this on DVD with subtitles.

This is a great movie. It's about Marcela, a South American living in Spain and facing mild discrimination because she's an immigrant taking jobs away from Spaniards. She lives with Nelson. Nelson is a man with a plan: he's got a gang of guys who steal dead flowers from the garbage heap, then Nelson cleans them up and sells them to local wandering flower sellers. His goal is to have a real flower shop (he's working out of their one-room apartment) with delivery trucks. He plans to call the store "Marcela's Flowers."

However, they aren't making enough money to pay the rent, and their refrigerator breaks down. So Marcela takes a job looking after a dying man named Amador. Amador and Marcela have some conversations as time goes by, and he tells her his theory of life, which she rejects out of hand.

Then a problem arises. Amador dies. Marcela is to be paid at the end of each month she looks after Amador, and he didn't live even that long. She needs the whole month's wage to pay off the new refrigerator. Marcela decides to just continue as if Amador were alive, intending to collect the full month's pay on the assumption that his daughter won't come back to visit (which is entirely possible),then worry about the discovery of his long-dead body when that time comes.

The great thing about the movie is Marcela's growth during this time of trouble. Magaly Solier plays Marcela, and she's wonderful as the poor immigrant who needs money and can't get a break. The key to the story is Amador's putting together of a picture puzzle, another thing that Marcela rejects: why not just buy the picture -- it's the same thing? However, Amador's rejected advice includes the idea that you have all the pieces of the puzzle of your life handed to you at birth, and you just have to figure out what they are and put them together to see the big picture.

Watching Marcela puzzle through her life in those few weeks is sad, humorous, and heartening. Director Fernando Leon de Aranoa does a very good job with a very good cast. He also wrote the screenplay. I highly recommend this movie.

A South American immigrant, an unfaithful boyfriend, a prostitute at the end of her carrier, an old man left to rest, by his family, till the death comes an takes her prize. All this characters coexist in a very bizarre, yet simple and believable way. These are the characters that we see across our daily routine, transposed, from reality to fiction, without losing any of their authenticity.

Flowers celebrate life, love and death, and connect both the ends of the limited and closed interval where we stand. The flowers are the most visible and important adornment in this film. Even though they are natural flowers, they need some help to intensify their perfume. Reference, perhaps, to the constant element of artificiality in our lives. Reference to the art of pretending.

The film has a constant and intense summer light. It flows from brief moments of joy and humor to introspection. Dialogues of simple minds, that reach well under the surface of the common places.

This is a simple story, told magnificently.

Amador is a a tale about love, death, life, hope, and change. Brilliantly written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, the film has an outstanding leading cast (Magaly Solier and Celso Bugallo) and beautiful music. Besides the sadness and despair, Fernando León de Aranoa manages, as always, to paint the film with humor and hope. Poetic, beautiful, brilliant, sad, funny, and moving. Masterpiece. 10 / 10