EARTH European Union Film Showcase

This movie is so beautiful and strange that
those qualities alone recommend it. The
hero is an exterminator-he specializes in
killing the bugs that infest the red, rather
Martian soil of a marvelous bleak stretch
of Spanish countryside. Moreover, he
thinks he’s an angel: his head is forever in
the stars; he confides wonderful data
about the cosmos to us in voice-over. Early
on, he has a mesmerizing conversation
with a field worker who’s been hit by lightning-
this firmly plants his right foot on
earth, and his left in the hereafter. Then
again, he could just be schizophrenic.
Writer-director Julio Medem keeps a witty,
poetic state of ambiguity alive that enriches
what could’ve been a humdrum talefor
our exterminating angel is also (yawn)
in love with two women. It helps that the
women are,- in themselves, so angelic and
incandescent. -FX. Feeney, LA Weekly/
Mr. Showbiz on line. Tierra is FX Feeney’s
Critic’s Choice