Critics reviews

Venturing deep into the protagonist's dream life, wryly observing unsightly monsters from the id, Veiroj makes Buñuel an inevitable reference point; it's to his great credit and the film's that The Apostate, prankish and heartfelt, is not diminished by the comparison.

A USEFUL LIFE is, in short, a tough act to follow, but Veiroj's third feature (and first shot in Spain), THE APOSTATE, is as charming and thoughtful as its predecessor, and it pushes the director's art in new directions as well.

Veiroj (A Useful Life) keeps the humor ironic and his tousle-haired protagonist (Álvaro Ogalla) steeped in a familiar middle-aged ennui, but his approach is muted and elegant, revealing the hero's predicament slowly through stray comments, glances, and eerie cutaway shots. The narrative grows increasingly surreal, but the clues to this are subtle, which challenges one not only to think critically but also to pay attention.

The film's observant, no-hurry vibe is what's really going on; watching Gonzalo watch his grinning student quiz him on why women, and his mother, like "tickles" — or his sleeping cousin as he undresses yet again to try to screw her — is its own comic pleasure.

Apostasy suggests melancholy. Besides ingenuous, no-frills execution, sly, surreal, and perverse comedy—among the cinematic influences cited by Veiroj are Marco Ferreri's The Audience, Welles's The Trial, and the gestures of Fernando Rey in the early films of Bunuel–lifts The Apostate out of a dark place into a joyful light. Informed optimism? Quizas.

Working within a tradition of heightened, impressionistic satire, Veiroj demonstrates a rare aptitude for depicting his distraught protagonist's emotional world. Enhanced by a dynamic and evocative soundtrack that alternates between Prokofiev and music from propagandist newsreels, The Apostate is an intoxicating tango between reality and reverie: the daily experience of a man whose incomprehension and refusal of conventions lead him into a sweet but progressively maddening abyss.

Feredico Veiroj's El Apostata satirizes the extreme bureaucracy and hypocrisy one man faces while trying to erase his name from Catholic Church records in Spain. Anchored by an achingly deadpan lead performance from Álvaro Ogalla, this dark comedy dabbles in surrealism and dream logic to express a heightened frustration with the status quo.

With the exception of Hong Sangsoo, I cannot think of another filmmaker since Jim Jarmusch or Aki Kaurismäki in their early work who is so devoted to nurturing such beguilingly low-key, highly stylized comedy.

The Apostate finds humor in unusual images or situations, few resounding with lasting impact. Jokey bits of business, like the sight of a priest smoking a cigarette or a nun pecking away behind a computer, stand in for a more daring critique of religious hypocrisy.

There's comedy and plenty to think about in Federico Veiroj's third feature The Apostate, a wry character study of a man faced with a wall of bureaucracy as he tries to extract himself from the Catholic Church at the same time as facing his own existential demons... It features a great debut performance from Álvaro Ogalla, loosely riffing on his own life; there's also a slyly impressive nod to Luis Buñuel, and Veiroj retains a lightness of touch and a warmth that draws you to his hapless hero.

It is certainly spiritual in a way, but Ogalla's beautifully ambiguous performance wonderfully treads the line between melancholy and merely annoyed and/or bored... The Apostate immediately brought back all that I missed from this filmmaker, at once old fashioned and forward thinking, funny and tender.

[Veiroj's] hero is Gonzalo Tamayo (Álvaro Ogalla), a Spanish agnostic who sets out to get his name removed from the church's baptismal records. This absurd, quixotic task quickly recedes into the background, giving way to dream sequences and Nanni Moretti-esque detours; perhaps The Apostate is too scrambled and sputtering to be very good, but too gracefully directed to come within spitting distance of bad.