Ignacio Mateos, Pierre Bénézit, Raphaëlle Agogué and Jordi Vilches in 'La banda Picasso'.
Paris, 1911. The Mona Lisa disappears from the Louvre. Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire are arrested and confronted. Pablo remembers how Guillaume had introduced him to an athletic young man they call The Baron and who, upon learning of his fascination for some Iberian statues, decided to steal them from the Louvre and sell them to him at a ridiculous price. Those statues were four years earlier the inspiration for the first cubist painting, "The young ladies of Avignon." Pablo is Spanish, Guillaume is Polish and El Barón is Belgian. And the press speaks of an international gang that arrived in France to ransack the museums.
'La banda Picasso' is based on the true story of the theft of “La Gioconda” from the Louvre Museum in 1911; As a result of that event, Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire were arrested and charged with committing the crime. And of course, our Fernando Colomo had to take advantage of this comic situation, for which he has counted on Ignacio Mateos, Pierre Bénézit, Lionel Abelanski, Raphaëlle Agogué, Jordi Vilches and Louise Monot, among others.
With this movie it has happened to me like many, that you don't know whether to place it in the genre of thriller, drama, or comedy, but finally, I think the most appropriate would be comedy, yes. But the truth is that it would be a comedy at half throttle, since the narrative that Colomo has used, loaded with flashbacks, is unsettling.
Still, I have to admit that Colomo has known how to return to the line of other of his films, such as 'Al sur de Granada' or 'Los años barbaros', in which we met historical figures, and in this case we are immersed in this anecdote by Picasso, Apollinaire, Matisse, and the rest of the band, quite accurate, although with less dynamism than in the previous ones.
What cannot be said about 'La banda de Picasso' is that it is a job that has been carried out in a hurry, they say that Colomo has worked on his script for 8 years and his post-production, full of special effects, lasted almost two more years, delaying the premiere until this 2013. Besides language difficulties, up to four languages are spoken in the film.
More information - The Spanish cinema that we will see in 2013
Source - labutaca.net