As the sole Spanish helming representative at Cannes 2000, second-timer Cesc Gay carries a heavy burden. But if the warm reception given to his stylish co-directed debut, 1998's English language, black-and-white Hotel Room, is a guide, Gay is up to the task. Hotel Room made exemplary use of its miniscule budget: most of the funding came from compensation which the film's co-director Gimelberg received for the death of his father in a car crash, and it was shot in 16mm in Gimelberg's apartment in Harlem, disguised as Room 426 of a New York hotel. Its dialogue was witty, its characters memorable.

Although huge by Hotel Room's standards, Krampack's budget of around $1.5 million was still small enough to mean that the script needed to be spot on to make the project work. So it made sense to base it on a successful play, in this case by Catalan Jordi Sánchez. Krampack takes the same basic story, but lowers its characters' ages from 20-somethings to adolescents. Teenagers Dani (20-year-old Fernando Ramallo, star of Daniel Monzon's The Heart Of The Warrior) and Nico (21-year-old Jordi Vilches) are friends, spending a few days together over the summer of 1999 in Dani's parents' holiday home. They meet two girls ­ Berta (Esther Nubiola) and Elena (Marieta Orozco). After a voyage of self-discovery, Nico and Dani find that they are more interested in each other than in the girls.

Eloi Yebra from Barrio, veteran theatre actor/director Mario Gas and Myriam Mézières ­ star of Alain Tanner's Messidor-produced The Diary Of Lady M ­ also feature. Krampack is a platform for some striking new Spanish acting talent, and a valuable addition to the coming-of-age genre in which recent Spanish cinema has produced some notable examples. Barrio was groundbreaking in its non-pretentious treatment of the rites of passage theme; recent work by Miguel Albaladejo (Manolito Gafotas, Ataque Verbal) ploughed a similar furrow.

Steve Grayson