re:mote voices

Title: Torremolinos 73
Cast: Javier Cámara, Candela Peña, Juan Diego, Malena Alterio, Fernando Tejero, Mads Mikkelsen, Ramón Barea, Thomas Bo Larsen
Director: Pablo Berger

As the title suggests, Torremolinos 73 is a Spanish film set in Torremolinos in 1973. It follows Alfredo (Javier Cámara) and his wife Carmen (Candela Peña), and their life together. Alfredo is a struggling door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. Carmen is desperate to have a baby, but since they can't even pay their rent, Alfredo is dead set against it.

With plummeting sales the publishing company has to do something if they are going to stay in business. Educational videos covering the reproductive habits of ordinary people have been doing well in Scandinavia. Leading to the ultimatum, stay with the company and help re-launch by filming "educational" home movies, or start looking for work elsewhere.

With a certain reluctance Alfredo and Carmen set about making what are essentially home made porn films. The money is too good not to, and the alternatives don't bear thinking about. With money coming in Carmen can start thinking seriously about children. While, at the same time Alfredo becomes bored with making the same film over and over again. So he starts planning to make his masterpiece, an art film called Torremolinos 73.

Javier Camara takes the lead role, an actor who has been in a number of prominent Spanish films in recent years. Though this is perhaps the first to get this level of distribution where he has so clearly been in the lead role. In Sex And Lucia and Bad Education he was the sidekick to the lead, while in Talk To Her he was one of 4 leads. His leading lady here is Candela Peña, who like Camara has a Almodovar link, having been in All About My Mother - though more recently she was the lead in the film Take My Eyes. A film that was ironically made after Torremolinos 73, even though it got distribution here first.

Torremolinos 73 is a curious mix. A period film, it has a real feel of actually having been made in the 1970's at points, the colour of the film stock complimenting the clothing and decor to create a real sense of the time. The film starts in comedic mode, droll and a little farcical - presenting this somewhat absurd plot and running with it. Increasingly surreal, as we follow the transformation from encyclopaedia salesman to pornographer to auteur. In the end though there is a melancholy, the darkness creeps into the material, bringing the consequence of reality with it.