On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Matacanes dies, arrives in heaven, and finds it nothing like the advertising: there is an upheaval going on up there too. Saint Peter explains the situation. God is unhappy with how the world is turning out and has decided to send a second son. Jesus is firmly against it, on the grounds that the entire story would then have to be rewritten. Jose Luis Cuerda takes the absurdist humour of the Spanish countryside and moves it upstairs, running scripture like a village council meeting. Francisco Rabal and Fernando Fernan Gomez play the nonsense with total gravity, which is exactly where the comedy comes from. Anyone who knows Cuerda's other films in this vein will recognise the territory immediately.