Before Almodóvar, there was Aranda and this is the ninth of Victoria Abril's thirteen collaborations with the Catalonian director and it is a film which leaves you devastated and grasping for meanings. Aranda is such an interesting director of women's stories and in every film I see women at the forefront of the purpose and the message. Even after the end of the Franco regime, Vicente continued to examine the role of women under the strictures of the previous forty years and Amantes is rightly regarded as one of his, and Spain's, finest films of the nineties.
The basic premise is the choice one man must make between two extremes of womanhood and the crimes he must commit if he goes one way of the other – betrayal is unavoidable either way. Set in the Spain of the early 1950s when the original “true crime story” took place, it features Jorge Sanz as Paco, the young man with the choice. His fiancée Trini (Maribel Verdú) is the catholic, rural home-maker, quiet and dignified and yet with a will of steel to match her principles of life, love and religion. Luisa (Victoria Abril) on the other hand, is a very modern woman, of the city and at one with its vices, including crime. She dominates Paco sexually – he is the object of attraction in the film and not the two beauties he is between and this is very well done by Aranda, inverting the sexual power relationships just as he highlights the limited choices available to either woman at the time.
Paco is entitled and simply not focused on the same
desperate realities as the women… he’s deservedly a sex object but one on whom
the women project their desire and the life they hope to lead. This is not to
say that he is without feelings he just can’t shake the normality of the moment
and when he does it’s entirely at the behest of both his competing lovers.
The film starts with Paco, fresh out of his army service, visiting his long-term girlfriend, Trini, who works as a maid for his commandant (Enrique Cerro) and his wife (Mabel Escaño). She is beautiful and a home-maker, ideal for him and yet she refuses to consummate their relationship until they are married. Paco also needs to provide and ends up going to Madrid to find work although he quickly finds a means of satisfying his frustrated desires in the form of his new landlady, Luisa who greets him eating candy and covered in Christmas decorations, an earthy, corporeal counter to his virgin fiancée.
Their first sex scene is feral and daring with Aranda later explaining that he discussed the choices with his two actors and it was Sanz who came up with the innovative use of a towel by Abril’s character. It’s transgressive but on purpose and anyone who finds this overtly sexy needs to re-examine their attitude towards the use of soft fabrics in the home.
Sadly, work doesn’t entirely suit Paco and after failing a job or two he becomes a kept man and increasingly caught up in Luisa’s criminal side lines. Yet his plan is always to return to his intended as this is what has been planned and he feels an obligation as well as affection for the younger woman. Inevitably, it will not be possible to satisfy both of his lovers and once they know of each other’s existence, a battle begins which, whilst initially having the trappings of a romantic comedy, soon delves into the darker depths of both women’s desires…
Dusty Verdict: Aranda pulls you into the depths of these characters’ lives and delivers a film that stays vivid in your mind even weeks later. The performances of Abril and Verdú are both astonishing, so febrile and nuanced with the fire of still waters running even deeper than the surface passions they display. It’s a visceral watch that leaves you in that uncertain space between watching and wanting to avert your eyes from certain scenes… not because they are graphic but because it feels intrusive and you ultimately care for these characters.
The cinematography from frequent collaborator José Luis Alcaine is superb and captures the stark differences between city and country, dark, warm interiors of boudoir and rustic cool for kitchens and sparse barracks. The moments around the church towards the end are also so well shot including the unexpected snow… as if nature was intervening in the story.
Abril was originally intended to have the role of Trini and
when the role of Luisa was vacated she decided to accept it. She was only 32 at
the time but watching the film it’s hard to imagine better casting for either
part especially as the 21-year-old Verdú who, at the beginning of her
remarkable career, is very powerful in this moral fable just as Abril is, using
her experience to play the older woman fighting with her for the love of a –
reasonably – good man. Jorge Sanz has just the right amount of fresh-faced
guilelessness in a part initially marked for Antonio Banderas who was
unavailable.
Much lauded on its release – it won two Spanish “Oscars” for best film and best direction – Vicente Aranda latter said “Whenever someone wants to flatter me, they bring up the subject of Amantes. I haven’t been able to make a film that takes its place.” Any director would be flattered to count such a film among their work.
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| Jorge Sanz and Maribel Verdú |
*The real life events occurred involving a couple from working class Madrid in 1949 and in La Canal, a small village near Burgos… watch the film first before finding out how much inspiration Aranda took!