Foul Play

Juan works in a repair shop in Madrid and has planned a holiday for a long weekend, but the plan falls apart when his girlfriend leaves him. After a chance meeting with two foreign tourists he gets on his motorcycle and heads for Torremolinos. Juan Antonio Bardem built the film as a road movie, and the journey shows Spain in its transition: what a worker without class consciousness sees while passing through the structures that govern him. The turning of women into something to look at is part of that landscape. The screenplay comes from a story by Daniel Sueiro. Alfredo Landa plays the type he was known for, but Bardem gives that type a social edge it had not had before. The film won the top prize at the tenth Moscow International Film Festival.