Latin American Film Festival: Tosca
Orange County Weekly
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Proving that film-school pretentiousness is a universal university malady, Tosca is a modern reworking of the Puccini classic done by a collective of 36 students from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. In this version, Tosca is an actress (Marialejandra Martín) who witnesses the murder of a government official while filming her latest project, Mario is her director/lover, and the fiendish Scarpia is a police chief monitoring our heroine. Curiously, there’s little mention of the real-life opera involving the Scarpia-esque Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez that has entertained the country for the past year. And none of Puccini’s fabulous arias are used. May 8.