Goya in Bordeaux

Francisco Goya, at eighty-two, is living in exile in Bordeaux. He has removed himself by choice from the oppressive rule of Ferdinand VII and is there with his much younger companion Leocadia and their daughter Rosario. He still paints at night. Talking with his daughter, between headaches and in the scattering of old age, the past comes back: his youth, his years as court painter, the Duchess of Alba, and the illness that left him deaf. Carlos Saura's film is not a biography but a painting: the scenes are built like canvases, and the light and colour come straight out of Goya's own work. The world of the Black Paintings he made after going deaf seeps into the film. Francisco Rabal plays the old Goya and Jose Coronado the young one. The telling is not chronological; it moves scattered, like memory itself. Vittorio Storaro was the cinematographer, and most of the film's awards in Spain came in the visual categories.