The Distorting Mirror. Film and Esperpento

In building a story, Kipling’s advice was not to adopt the figure of an all-knowing demiurge, but rather to ignore part of history during its narration, which is where the narrative unpredictability and dramatic power lie in Espíritu sagrado, the first feature-length film of a director, Chema García Ibarra, who caught the eye back in 2009 with his short film El ataque de los robots de Nebulosa-5 (Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5). Ever since, his work has trodden a distinctive path of costumbrista science fiction from Elche and an approach to fantasy from the everyday, and vice versa, enabling him to continue to explore the chasms that open in the environment closest to us. His use of amateur actors imparts a sense of strangeness which triggers a horror located out of frame: the bad that looms over the world, but not in a “watch the skies” sense, for evil will not arrive from outer space. It will come from our immediate environment.

Manuel Ruiz Castillo and Perico Beltrán wrote El extraño viaje following a proposal by Berlanga to explain the mysterious crime of Mazarrón, resulting in a film that was officially spurned but later recovered as the masterpiece it is. Family violence, obscurantism and unembellished horror are the twine Fernán-Gómez uses to weave a film that is as intriguing as it is disturbing. The protagonist, a Lothario with limited horizons, dreams of himself as an anointed star of zarzuela. Opposite him is a family made up of a tyrannical sister and two other dull-witted family members with their wings clipped. Beltrán draws the image of the concave mirror: “All of these characters are fairly close to what was then the norm in Franco’s Spain. For me, the situation the country found itself in was abnormal, which is why I don’t find the protagonists that strange or grotesque”. Fernán-Gómez would take five years to premiere the film, and with the added chastisement of a double bill for what was essentially outsider cinema. 

It is doubtful whether Almodóvar would have wilfully considered his third feature film an esperpento given that it seems to search more for the role of a melodrama with a bolero soul. Yet those singing nuns that populated 1950s and 1960s Spanish cinema — from Carmen Sevilla to Rocío Dúrcal — here become a handful of canonical “Almodóvar girls”, loaded up with drug addictions, lesbian love affairs and masochistic discipline. In the microcosm of the convent, with no room for manoeuvre and only room for the Corín Tellado-style romantic bestseller, the wild beasts with the spirit of the symbol, the virgins used as mannequins from vogued fashion, and, of course, the most tormented of names: sor Perdida (Sister Lost), sor Víbora (Sister Viper), sor Estiércol (Sister Manure) and sor Rata del Callejón (Sister Alley Rat). Thus, Almodóvar executes the transit from the Arnichesian comic sketch, conspicuous in his first two works, to the systematic deforming of the heroines of folk cinema in National-Catholic robes.

An unusual idea forms the point of departure of Edgar Neville’s film: a detective story set in Madrid’s Rastro flea market and the meadow of San Isidro, where the born-and-bred and the grotesque combine with the imagery of painter José Gutiérrez Solana. Domingo de Carnaval leaves behind the fantastical screwball comedy of Neville’s La vida en un hilo (Life on a Thread, 1944) and is rooted more in a picaresque, peripheral reality, one of hallucinatory masks, rough wine, fried food and cocaine. The lead rests with Conchita Montes as Nieves, a market trader’s assistant in the Rastro, and the daughter of the chief suspect in a murder. The director uses her one-on-one confrontation with a rookie police officer (Fernando Fernán-Gómez) to heighten the sexual tension to maximum comic effect. The operation of subversion culminates in Solanaesque masks during the Burial of the Sardine, with Nieves cross-dressed as Don Juan Tenorio and her friend Julia moustachioed. A bona fide broadside against the holier-than-though Spanish society of the time.

Silvia (Núria Espert) has no possibility of upward mobility other than her hymen. In a hypocritical society governed by the capitalist logic of the decadent Catalan bourgeoisie, her passport to a higher status is a certificate of virginity, a document which helps her to persuade Víctor (Adolfo Marsillach) to travel to Venezuela so he can leave his wife and, when she moves to counter the proposition by underlining sacrosanct family values, she marries his older brother, the hereu (Carlos Otero). The certificate conquers all. In the meantime, however, Silvia meets another outcast, a Valencian immigrant like herself (Víctor Petit), in the Barcelona of Gauche Divine and Tuset Street. Quick as a flash, the film makes marriage, inheritance, fashion and even the Barcelona Film School look ridiculous just as it makes a concealed defence of the Spanish immigrants in Catalonia as a restorative force of the old and sterile Bourgeoisie.

Love and tenancy are, as stated in the subtitle to Rafael Azcona’s novel, upon which this film is based, the nub of El pisito, with its tale of love thwarted by a subletting which obstructs the wedding between Rodolfo (José Luis López Vázquez) and Petrita (Mary Carrillo). Petrita urges Rodolfo to marry the eighty-year-old owner of the apartment in order for him to be in line for an inheritance and thus attain this roof so desired, like El Dorado, in pre-developmentalist Madrid (not dissimilar to today) — a premise that was not some malicious imagining but an event taken from the crime reports of the day. The sudden healing of the old lady’s ailments, owing to the joys of marriage, shapes a form of black humour underpinned by a medley of characters of every stripe who were officially at variance with the Spain of that time.

Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale, Las truchas explores none other than the decomposition of a society desperately looking to survive after the death of Franco. A moral parable of the Transition to democracy, this film is set in the microcosm of a restaurant where an association of fishermen holds their annual meal, gorging themselves on trout from their own catch. Yet the cooks are on strike, the quarrels between the fishermen are the order of the day and the trout are practically rotten. To breathe life into the four disputing groups — the fishermen, restaurant employees, uninvited guests and children — García Sánchez orchestrates a multi-voiced cast, with over fifty characters, in which veteran and youthful values go hand in hand with the clutch of Argentinian actors who had arrived in Spain fleeing the dictatorship of General Videla.

Opposite the cryptic-allegoric model adopted by auteur cinema in the same period and the Third Way, Betriu opts for intentional ugliness in Furia Española, leaving all forms of Spanish shame in the air and sketching a pitiless depiction of Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain in the final stages of Francoism. Fandom is a pretext to depict the sexual repression, all-pervasive advertising, sexism, television, emigration of non-Catalan Spanish settlers, prostitution, misery and moral hypocrisy of an entire society. The film is underpinned by two proven box-office actors: the impersonator Cassen, the protagonist of Luis G. Berlanga’s Plácido (1961) and the comedies of the Balcázar brothers, and Mónica Randall, with a nod in this film to her forays in the spaghetti western.

José Luis López Vázquez, in the role of a frustrated bullfighter whose expectations are flipped upside down when the apprentice bullfighter under his wing meets the expectations he cannot reach, carries on his shoulders a film which unfurls a register which is not the tragicomedy already exhibited in Luis G. Berlanga’s ¡Vivan los novios! (Here’s to the Bride and Groom!, 1979) or Mi querida señorita (My Dear Young Lady, 1972), by Jaime de Armiñán. In this case, from his wife he steals money allocated for his daughter’s abortion to pay for a bullfight with young bulls for his protégé, which practically says it all. Another striking aspect is the rejoneadora (picador) Antoñita Linares playing herself. Actors and script aside, there are also sidenotes of a setting that catches the eye and the feeling of what might have been in the hands of a film-maker with a little more vim. José Luis Borau was behind the production of the only fiction film American director Ray Rivas would make before embarking on the study of ufology.

 Bullfighting boiled down to either a phenomenal version of the atrocity of killing an animal for show or restored to its most sublime ideal of poetry and ritual. The audience decides their own stance in the latest film by Albert Serra, winner of the Golden Shell Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival and unquestionably one of the films of the year. Tardes de soledad rightly takes its place among the long autochthonous tradition of films about bullfighters, among which we could also cite El monosabio (The Wise Monkey), by Ray Rivas, and Ladislao Varda’s Tarde de Toros (Afternoon of Bulls). Here, the key difference to what came before is that in Tardes de soledad we appreciate the act of bullfighting reduced to experience, atmosphere and a way of seeing and feeling that is distinctly filmic. Something so stereotypically Spanish emptied of ideology or the zero degree of Spanish esperpento?

Made when the knell was sounding for Francoism and the passage towards a better life was nigh, Gulliver was afflicted with the last gasps of censorship. Due to the trifling matter of an oral sex scene, the film was blocked and ended in a press campaign by its director to decry administrative pressures. What was it exactly that so shocked the censors? An adaptation of contemporary Spain, in the form of a satirical parable of Jonathan Swift’s work, in which an escaped criminal hides in an abandoned town which serves as a refuge for a troupe of dwarfs who act in comedy-bullfighting shows. The result, as much an esperpento as one would expect, is ultimately something more brutal, coarse and consciously uglier than anticipated, culminating in a rubric of the film devoted “to the marginalised in any state, to the foreigners from nowhere”. A key work for its director Alfonso Ungría and for Fernán-Gómez in his evolution as a film-maker, here in the capacity of screenwriter.

Isolation, selfishness and hypocrisy brand the Christmas Eve journey that takes the driver of a three-wheeled motorcycle from some public toilets, which he uses as a makeshift home, to a charity campaign with the slogan “Sit a Poor Man at Your Table”, akin to those organised by the Congregation of the Miraculous Medal during Francoism. “Both of us see an aesthetic dimension in the sinisterness of black humour”, Berlanga would say in reference to screenwriter Rafael Azcona in this, their first feature film together — a shift of the author-centred axis for the director in his move towards esperpento. It remains to be seen what the result would have been with Miguel Gila, Berlanga’s go-to actor, but in his place Cassen finds the role of a lifetime, perhaps because “the unfortunate wretches are all the same”, as the owner of the Christmas hamper brimming with tinned goods proclaims, telling the destitute family: “Tonight we’re going to eat modern things, like the Americans!”. 

Winner of the Silver Lion Award at Venice Film Festival in 2010, this dark tragicomedy set in Francoist Spain follows Javier, a sad clown traumatised by the Civil War and by his violent childhood who falls in love with Natalia, the beautiful trapeze artist in the circus who is trapped in an abusive relationship with Sergio, a happy but cruel and violent clown. Javier’s obsession with Natalia sends him flying into a spiral of jealousy and brutality, culminating in a surreal and violent confrontation between both clowns. The film brings into play the context of Franco’s dictatorship to explore the extremes of violence and oppression in a story that mixes black comedy, horror and social critique. With a grotesque and provocative aesthetic, drawing from historical sources of literary and filmic esperpento, De la Iglesia sets forth a reflection on human pain and the scars left by Spain’s violent history.

This film examines the absurdity of relationships and human emotions via three independent stories, bound by the same surreal and existential tone. The narrative is laid out in three chapters: Infection, Sects and Love. In Infection we follow a woman who seems to have caught a strange “emotional infection”, a condition that forces her to express, with no filter, her thoughts and feelings, giving rise to uncomfortable and absurd situations. In Sects, a man becomes an obsessive stalker of strangers for no apparent reason, invaded by a feeling of surveillance and paranoia. In Love, finally, a man encounters a series of strange norms which, without explanation, seem to control his daily life. With a minimal aesthetic and absurd humour inherited from experiences of Spain’s post-war period, for instance the magazine La Codorniz, Esa sensación plays with the line between the comic and philosophic, making us reflect on how incomprehensible norms and emotions sometimes mould our lives.

Destello bravío is a profound, oneiric portrait of a town in Extremadura, where daily reality mixes with the surreal. The film follows different middle-aged women trapped in a suffocating routine as they fight against the emptiness of monotony and the weight of tradition. Each one looks for a “liberation” that will lead them to experience intense emotions in a world formed by silence and patriarchal norms. The characters make their way across scenes replete with symbolism and poetic language, submerging themselves in their repressed desires and fears in an attempt to find something that transcends the oppressive reality encircling them. Through a vibrant aesthetic bordering on magic realism, Rodríguez addresses themes of gender, identity and freedom in a rural environment, advancing a unique and evocative gaze at contemporary Spain. 

A theatrical release, following screenings at Rotterdam Film Festival, Viennale and Márgenes, of La parra, described by some critics as the Spanish film of the year. It follows Damián, who returns to Ferrol, his place of birth, after receiving news of the death of his father. Once a bastion of the Spanish naval industry and an eternal Valle-Inclán enclave, the Ferrol of today is a dilapidated town with few prospects, stuck between the decadence of the past and the weariness of the present. In such an environment, Damián experiences a string of surreal events in which the community confuses him for another person, opening the way for a story mixing the absurd and an existential drama, but with flecks of black humour and ghostly elements. Gracia, supported by the cinematography of Ion de Sosa and the music of Jonay Armas, uses a combination of archive footage and an aesthetic that recalls the marginal worlds of Valle-Inclán, José Gutiérrez Solana and Luis Buñuel.   

María Cañas is pure esperpento. This video artist’s work, characterised by a style that is irreverent, corrosive and experimental, addresses social and cultural themes with humour, irony and satire. She explores aspects such as popular culture, violence, folklore and the excess of images in the digital age, using montages that remix film, television and historical archives, an approach which makes her a critic of hegemonic discourses and contemporary visual consumption. Moreover, her works explore the curiosity and fascination with tragedy, using archives from bullfights and natural disasters to question collective rituals and the role of the image in building identity. By way of this “wild archivism”, Cañas reveals hidden or contradictory aspects in society as she celebrates and deconstructs popular culture.      

In this session the artist shows part of her series Black Mirror Cañí, where she delves deeper into the bizarre, addictive and psychotic world of networks, exploring the new subjectivities and images they generate: memes, gifs, viral videos, all united under esperpento. 

Diamantino is a fantastical satirical comedy that follows a famous Portuguese footballer after his poor performance in the World Cup final. His life drastically changes when he discovers immigrant exploitation and decides to adopt a young refugee. The plot becomes further entangled when his is trapped in a political conspiracy which involves cloning and espionage to create a perfect race of footballers to represent the “grandeur” of Portugal. As Diamantino tries to navigate his new reality, themes surface around nationalism, masculinity and lost innocence in a corrupt and manipulative world.

La casa lobo is an inimitable stop motion animation film combining psychological horror and dark fable. The story follows María, a young girl who escapes a German religious colony in southern Chile, inspired by the infamous Colonia Dignidad. She seeks refuge in a mysterious house in the woods, but soon discovers that the home appears to be alive and is constantly transforming, reflecting her deepest fears and desires. The narrative explores oppression, indoctrination and the loss of identity, while the protagonist attempts to find freedom in an environment that imprisons her. With a low-fi aesthetic and experimental techniques, La casa lobo builds an unsettling atmosphere which brings to mind macabre fairy stories and theatre of objects and puppet shows.

Zama follows the story of Diego de Zama, an eighteenth-century Spanish public administrator who is assigned to a remote colony in the Americas. As he anxiously awaits a transfer to a better destination, his life is discoloured by frustration, tedium and the indifference of colonial bureaucracy. As the years pass, Zama suffers an emotional disintegration, trapped in a hostile environment that consumes him and alienates him from his identity. Therefore, the film explores solitude, desire and senseless colonial power through its lead, who could also be interpreted as an ancestor of the Tyrant Banderas conceived by Valle-Inclán to, from esperpento, criticise the figure of the dictator.

In a Mexico set in a dystopian future (or not), where the disappearance of women is linked to drug trafficking, Huck is a girl who lives with her father, an addict forced to tend to a baseball field where a cartel plays. Always masked to hide her gender in a dangerous world for women, she spends her days helping her father and surviving in a hostile environment. The situation escalates when Huck decides to confront the cartel as she looks to protect her father and find a way out of the situation. Through a raw and symbolic narrative, Hernández Cordón sets forth a reflection on survival and dignity through a child’s eyes and in an unrelenting environment governed by fear. A gaze through the lens of fiction on contemporary Mexico and the irrational nature of violence. 

Bacurau, a mix of western and thriller, is set in a small fictional town in north-east Brazil. The storyline is based around the inhabitants of Bacurau, who face their community being wiped off the map and the arrival of a strange turn of events: drones, violent attacks and the invasion of a group of foreigners. To defend their land and cultural identity, the inhabitants unite and are led by figures such as a doctor and an ex-guerrilla. Swiftly regarded as a symbol of resistance against Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the film explores themes such as exploitation, colonialism and the resistance of marginalised communities, unearthing an allegory of the struggle against oppression and violence throughout history.