Torremolinos 73

Spain at the start of the seventies. Alfredo sells encyclopedias door to door and sells nothing. With the company about to close, it offers its staff new work: making sexually explicit films for the Danish market under the label of education. Alfredo and his wife Carmen accept. The more time Alfredo spends behind the camera the more he believes he is a director, and he takes Bergman as his model. Pablo Berger writes and directs, in his first feature. Javier Cámara plays Alfredo and Candela Peña plays Carmen. The background is real. Censorship in the last years of Franco was severe, but there was a gap for productions aimed at the Scandinavian market, and a great many such films were genuinely made. Berger turns that strange industry into the ground for a comedy. The actual subject is elsewhere: a couple who cannot have a child, and what the wife wants out of this. Carmen is the film's quiet centre. While Alfredo dreams of art, she makes her own decision. Berger later became known for Blancanieves, shot silent and in black and white. The distance between the two films shows how wide his range is. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish comedy, the cultural history of the Franco years, and strange true stories. Who it is not for: the sexual content is heavy by subject, and the shifts between comedy and sadness feel uneven to some.