Belle Epoque. - movie reviews

National Review, April 4, 1994 by John Simon

* If Savage Nights won four Cesars, Fernando Trueba's Belle Epoque won nine Goyas, their Spanish equivalent. This contender for America's Academy Award for Best Foreign Film is a comic counterpart to Collard's movie; the influence here is not Jean Genet but Georges Feydeau. Fernando, a young deserter from the Spanish army in 1931--he is a Bible-carrying agnostic and Republican--finds shelter in the house of an eccentric painter, Manolo, who lives in a small, countrified town, where he is annually visited by his four toothsome daughters from Madrid. Clara, the eldest, is a still-young widow; the passionate Rocio is engaged to the richest and dopiest young man in town; Violeta is a closet lesbian; Luz is a sweet ingenue full of nascent womanliness.

Fernando has a fling with all four daughters in turn, and eventually marries Luz, as Spain goes Republican and Manolo's roving opera-singer wife returns for a brief dalliance with her husband, before resuming her travels with her French impresario and lover. This time they are off to America, and they take Luz and Fernando with them.

There is much more, e.g., the sad story of the town's priest, a friend and follower of Unamuno, who hangs himself when the Republicans oust the Carlists. Manolo remarks, "He did not understand that Unamuno is a poet, not a thinker." Trueba's film is a largely bucolic romp, modeled on Jean Renoir's Une Partie de campagne. Though commendably literate, it is a by-the-numbers farce, as each of the daughters, with geometrical precision, gets involved with our wide-eyed Candide. Everybody profits. Rocfo becomes reconciled to marriage to a ninny, Violeta will come out of the closet, Clara will seek another husband before it's too late, and Luz will live happily with Fernando. Manolo has his autumnal wisdom and promises of more visits from his globe-trotting wife.

The whole thing is simplistic even for farce, and unfortunately shows its origin in a number of dinner-table conversations among the director and his two scenarists, one of whom, Rafael Azcona, wrote some of the best Spanish films, including Carlos Saura's The Garden of Delights. Belle Epoque is not one of them.