Burn the Bridges

Burn the Bridges’ opening gambit arrives amongst a flurry of discarded papers, scuffles, and overdramatic glares that wouldn’t look out of place in a Spanish soap opera. It’s this eagerness to slap the audience into attention that consistently undermines what is an occasionally powerful drama about the destructiveness of obsessive love. Irene Azuela, who’s performance is the highlight of the film, is Helena, who’s devotion to her bedridden mother threatens to suffocate all of her other relationships, including that of her quiet and sensitive brother Sebastian, portrayed with a glassy-eyed intensity by Angel Onesimo Nevares. Much like Helena’s descent into isolation and madness, the film disintegrates in the last half hour, lunging salaciously to infer as much as possible in a fairly aimless manner. To his credit, director Francisco Franco sews some deftly poetic subtext into the film, but these moments are all too rare amidst a glut of meretricious diversions.