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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
"Torremolinos 73": The softcore Ingmar Bergman of late-fascist Spain
This delicious little period piece from Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger is like one of those really expensive chocolates, where you start out expecting a brief sugar buzz and end up surprised by the sophistication and delicacy of the flavor. It begins as a sex farce set in the ultra-repressed atmosphere of early-'70s Spain, where people vaguely knew that a sexual revolution was taking place elsewhere, but they themselves were still trapped amid the nationalist-Catholic moralism of slowly dying dictator Francisco Franco.
In an early scene, a hefty client in for a leg-waxing at the salon where Carmen López (Candela Peña) works, explains that nothing as scandalous as the events in Bernardo Bertolucci's hit movie "Last Tango in Paris" could ever happen in Spain. The woman does seem to delight, however, in explaining to Carmen the infamous anal sex scene between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider: "Then he butters her buttocks like French toast!"
Indeed, Carmen, a deeply religious young woman married to a downtrodden encyclopedia salesman named Alfredo (Javier Cámara), seems like the last person likely to engage in any form of public lasciviousness. But "Torremolinos 73" spins out the unlikely fable of how, in those unenlightened pre-Almodóvar days, Carmen became a porn star pursued on the street by Scandinavian tourists, and how the balding, poker-faced Alfredo came to film a softcore remake of Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," set in the posh beach resort of Torremolinos.
The actual story behind Berger's film seems to lie somewhere between gospel truth and Spanish urban myth. He insists he met the real Alfredo López in the early '80s, and the "Seventh Seal" remake (originally called "Torremolinos 73" but a hit in Scandinavia as "The Adventures of a Horny Widow") genuinely existed. But it makes no difference; if the tale is pure invention it's still a delightful farce playing on the culture clash between the upright hypocrisy of Spaniards and the calculated lubricity of the Scandinavian sex industry.
More than that, it's a wistful domestic comedy about a couple whose love is completely genuine but whose ambitions are pulling them apart. Carmen wants to have a baby and Alfredo yearns to become an artist, and as in any true comedy, they will get what they want but only with a certain ironic asterisk attached. Cámara and Peña are wonderful actors who walk the taut wire between slapstick and pathos brilliantly, and the rest of Berger's cast is just as good, especially the pack of inscrutable, unsubtitled Danes who show up to "help" Alfredo direct his erotic masterwork. One of the year's serendipitous moments thus far.
"Torremolinos 73" opens April 15 in New York, with more cities to follow.
"House of D": David Duchovny time-travels to the Big Apple's past
Speaking of sweet 1973 nostalgia, I loved the portrayal of life in Greenwich Village during that tawdry year in "House of D," David Duchovny's debut as a writer-director. The movie itself is a mixed bag, and many viewers may feel it ultimately sinks under the waves of its oceanic sentimentality. But the former "X-Files" star is a genuine child of Manhattan who remembers what the city was like when ordinary folks, not possessed of bottomless piles of money, actually lived here.
Officially, at least, Duchovny stars in "House of D" as Tom Warshaw, a 40-something American painter living in Paris with his wife and kid. But he's not in the movie much. Adult Tom is just a conduit to take us back to 13-year-old Tommy (Anton Yelchin), who clings to the lower fringe of middle-class life with his widowed mom (real-life Duchovny spouse Téa Leoni) in a Village brownstone apartment.
Yelchin does look something like a baby Agent Mulder, but he seems even more like a junior version of Tim Robbins, shorn of 30 years and about 50 pounds. He's a wonderfully expressive young actor, and if Tommy's various dilemmas are standard coming-of-age fare, he makes you feel them acutely. Tommy must try to balance the demands of his pill-popping mom, his mentally retarded best friend, Pappas (Robin Williams), and the uptown rich girl (Zelda Williams) he yearns to know better, and we can figure out right away that it won't all end well.
There's a lot of corn to this urban fable, which is inevitable, I guess, if you're going to have Williams do his mentally-disabled-but-heart-of-pure-gold shtick one more time. And while Erykah Badu does her best with the role, I really found the imprisoned black chick who comes to serve as Tommy's life counselor an insufferable device. But the good news is that Duchovny (who's been blogging about the film religiously) has an undeniable feel for this medium, and a fine rapport with actors. His 1973 New York has a relaxed, downscale, slightly dingy feeling that'll seem dead-on to Gotham old-timers, and Duchovny understands that in the city's transformation into post-Giuliani money pit, something inexpressible was lost forever.
"House of D" opens April 15 in Los Angeles and New York, with many other cities to follow.
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