NY Times reviews Even the Rain

Here's a movie I hadn't heard of until now:

Movie Review
Even the Rain (2010)

NYT Critics' Pick
This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The New York Times.

Discovering Columbus’s Exploitation

By Stephen HoldenIcíar Bollaín’s bluntly political film “Even the Rain” makes pertinent, if heavy-handed, comparisons between European imperialism five centuries ago and modern globalization. In particular it portrays high-end filming on location in poor countries as an offshoot of colonial exploitation.

The movie is set in and around Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city, which the movie’s fictional penny-pinching film producer, Costa (Luis Tosar), has chosen as a cheap stand-in for Hispaniola in a movie he is making about Christopher Columbus. The year is 2000, and Costa is unprepared to deal with the real-life populist uprising in Bolivia after its government has sold the country’s water rights to a private multinational consortium.Comment:  Odd that this movie was named a NYT Critics' Pick. Holden doesn't seem that impressed with it.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  Juan Carlos Aduviri and Gael Garcia Bernal in Even the Rain.