The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar, 2004)
Spanish Title: Mar Adentro
The posters and press ads for Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside are not terribly enlightening: the face of hunky Javier Bardem dominates the image, set against the featureless blue of the sea. There is no indication of the content of the film, which centres on the quest by Ramón Sampedro (Bardem), a quadraplegic, to end his own life. Yet there is a greater honesty at work here, for the film is not the worthy-but-gruelling experience that the material might have you expecting. The Sea Inside is a tender and often funny film that is always engrossing and ultimately deeply moving.