Candida
If there’s something that strikes you as incredibly natural about the performance of the lead character in Candida, don’t be at all surprised. She’s not an actor. In fact, Candida was, for several years, director Guillermo Fesser’s maid. He found her so entertaining, that he wanted to make a film about her, and cast her in the lead role.
Candida (the character) is a widower whose husband drank himself to death. She has a daughter who apparently has a fondness for men living on the edge, and little time for her mother. But don’t think for one minute that she has been completely abandoned. Candida has two sons by her side. One is a drug-addled simpleton, and the other, a paranoid psychotic.
Admittedly, this sounds like a dire scenario, but Fesser manages to create a number of laugh-out-loud moments in this film. Candida’s wry demeanour and comments are all the funnier, because she is completely unaware of how amusing and incisive she actually is.
Candida’s coping strategy becomes just that: a strategy, in which she insinuates herself into the life of a man who can improve her sons’ circumstances. But we can all use a helping hand, and so he benefits by having the capable and motherly presence of Candida in his life.
Candida is an amusing film with surprisingly moving moments. It is well written and directed, and the cast is consistently good. But it owes its success largely to the simple and matter-of-fact portrayal of the title character. Brava Candida!