A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Monday, August 4, 2025

Volavérunt (Bigas Luna, 1999)

Aitana Sánchez-Guión in Volavérunt
La Maja Desnuda, by Francisco de Goya

Volavérunt, by Francisco de Goya
Cast: Aitana Sánchez-Guión, Penélope Cruz, Jordi Mollà, Jorge Perugorría, Stefania Sandrelli, Empar Ferrer, Zoe Berriatúa, Jean-Marie Juan, Olivier Achard, Fermí Reixach. Screenplay: Cuca Canals, Bigas Luna, based on a novel by Jean-Louis Benoît. Cinematography: Paco Femenia. Production design: Koldo Vallés. Film editing: Kenout Peltier. Music: Alberto García Demestres. 

Bigas Luna's Volavérunt tries to be several different things before finally settling down as perhaps the least interesting of them. It's an erotic fable, or a historical pageant, or a dramatization of an incident in the life of an artist, or a tale of political intrigue, before it finally becomes a whodunit. The title, which means "they have flown," refers perhaps most directly to one of Francisco de Goya's Caprichos, the artist's series of satirical etchings, which depicts his patron and perhaps mistress the Duchess of Alba, in flight with a group of grotesques at her feet. In the film, he shows his sketch of the scene to the duchess in response to her wish to fly. Which she might well desire, given that the duchess played by Aitana Sánchez-Guión is having an affair not only with Goya (Jorge Perugorría) but also with the Spanish prime minister Manuel de Godoy (Jordi Mollà), who is also having an affair with Queen Maria Luisa (Stefania Sandrelli). Meanwhile, Goya is painting a pair of portraits of a reclining woman, in one of which she is clothed and in the other nude. He is using as a model Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó (Penélope Cruz), but the face in the finished portraits is not hers, leading to speculation that the model was actually the duchess. But this famous artistic mystery fades into the background of the movie when the duchess suddenly dies. Luna turns Godoy and Goya into detectives, out to solve the mystery of the duchess's death. Ultimately, the film collapses under the weight of too much historical speculation, both political and artistic, with only the colorful setting and the vivid performances of Sànchez-Guión, Cruz, and Sandrelli to make it memorable. 
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