March 17, 2016
Belle Epoque –
Spain, 1992
Part of me feels that I will never get Fernando Trueba’s 1992 film Belle
Epoque. I first saw it back in 1993 on VHS, and my reaction to it may have
been the result of my having had expectations of it being nothing short of a
masterpiece. Why else, I reasoned beforehand, would it have beat one of my
favorite films of all time for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language
Film? Anytime a film has such unrealistic expectations thrust upon it, it’s
bound to come up short, often to no fault of its own. And so it should not come
as a shock that Belle Epoque failed
to impress me the first time around. In contrast, the film it beat for the
Oscar, Farewell My Concubine, has
risen in stature, continuing to perplex and move with its depth and poignancy. Over
the years, friends and critics have insisted that I missed just how special Belle Epoque really is, so recently, I
figured it was time to see if time had softened my objections to the film.
Belle Epoque is
the story of a young Spanish soldier named Fernando (Jorge Sanz) in 1931 who
deserts the army and eventually finds himself living in the house of a kind old
man and his four ravishingly beautiful daughters. Given this set up, the film
could easily have turned into an Almodovar-like comedy, replete with incidents
of bed-hopping and infidelity. And while there is some of this in the film, it
remains grounded by the time in which it is set, just five years before the
Spanish Civil War, which would end with Francisco taking power. In the year in
which the film takes place, Spain was in the grips of a power struggle. The
military collapsed, and the king abdicated the thrown. This left the
Nationalists, made up of those with power and affluence, to duke it out with
the Republicans, make up of the working class, for control of the country. In
other words, in the film, as it was in reality, Spain is at war with itself.
And the war is everywhere. In fact, it is what brings
everyone together. It is what causes Fernando to flee his unit, what brings the
daughters back to their father’s home, what likely pushed the old man’s wife to
take her opera singing on an overseas tour, and what occupies much of the conversations
that do not revolve around love, relationships, or physcial attraction. Politics
is ever-present as well. It is agued about at the dinner table; it wakes people
from their slumber, forcing them out of their homes and into public meetings.
It is the elephant in the room, a bond between those with like-minds, and a
wedge between those on opposing sides. It brings people together just as easily
as it drives them apart. Perhaps more importantly, it is a harbinger of both
great joy and heartbreaking tragedy.
However, this is not the main thrust of the film. What the
film mostly focuses on is young, innocent Fernando’s multiple pursuits of love,
and in one of the film’s most ingenious aspects, he is often on the receiving
end of such pursuits. Throughout the film, Fernando goes from being the pursuer
to being the pursued in a flash, and it is a role that he is not entirely
comfortable playing – although to be honest, he doesn’t protest for very long.
It’s not hard to realize that the last one will turn out to be his true love,
and part of the fun of the film is in seeing just who seduces whom and trying
to decipher their exact motivations. It’s also fun to note that the sisters are
all aware of the other’s exploits, and at times, their conversations about
Fernando resemble those of schoolgirls comparing notes.
Belle Epoque is
frequently humorous in a way that only a Black Comedy can be, and each
character is given interesting and heartfelt monologues to deliver. My favorite
of these came from the family patriarch, Don Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez),
whose lines are often so clever and absurd that they could easily have appeared
in a Tarantino or Woody Allen film. Also memorable is Don Manolo’s wife, Amalia
(Mary Carmen Ramirez), who announces her arrival in song. Later, she has a
poignant scene with her daughters which is just so lovely that I couldn’t help
wishing that I were part of the conversation. The acting is top-notch, the
characters so well written that audiences will likely find themselves wishing
that all of them could have their dreams comes true.
So did I like the film more the second time around? The
short answer is yes, yet the film still keeps me at a distance. It still seemed
oddly disjointed, fluctuating madly from scenes of screwball comedy to matters
of politics and death in the blink of an eye. I found myself intrigued by the
subplot, with its dark humor and exaggerated, Catch-22-like moments, yet when the film turned back to Fernando
and the sisters, I became less engaged. At times, I was struggling to care just
who Fernando eventually wound up with and longing for just one more scene
showcasing the poetic wit of Don Manolo or the philosophical meanderings of the
food-obsessed town priest. An entire film could have been made with those two
characters as its anchor, and I would have absolutely loved every minute of it.
I simply can’t say I felt this was about Belle
Epoque as a whole, and this frustrated me. I wanted to love it, to see in
it the qualities that made it triumph over Kaige Chen’s masterpiece. I just
didn’t, and, unfortunately, I’m beginning to see that I never will. (on DVD)
3 stars
*Belle Epoque is
in Spanish with English subtitles.
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