The Dumbfounded King

Seventeenth-century Spain, the court of Philip IV. The king goes out one night and sees a woman called Marfisa naked. From that moment only one thing is on his mind: he wants to see his own wife naked too. The wish looks simple, but the court turns it into an affair of state. The Grand Inquisitor convenes the theologians and whether the king may see his wife naked is debated in all seriousness. The source is Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel. The film, directed by Imanol Uribe, won eight Goya awards. The humour comes entirely from that disproportion: a small, human wish is turned into a theological crisis by an enormous institution, and nobody sees the absurdity of the situation. The film looks at a past in Spain where church and power were entangled, and does so not by attacking crudely but by imitating the seriousness. A hundred and six minutes.