Francesco Gissi
Leo starts the movie as depressed
woman whose main problem is her relationship with Paco. This relationship, that
once had worked, now is only the shadow of a hope as she waits for him, and
suffers much for it. She is a secretly successful writer[1]
(a creator of imaginary worlds), and her relations are mostly women her age.
She cannot produce the rose colored novels for the masses that she once wrote, and
which she now despises, instead writing “only black”.
In a very early scene she gets trapped in the
boots her dead son gave her. She tries to take them off, but cannot. The boots,
that most close to the ground and tied to the memory of the past - the roots,
as it were - have become a prison. There’s a crisis of identity, especially in
regards to the relation that use to provide meaning. Both the old (Son: maybe a
gold age) past and the recent (Paco) past are problematic.
I’m aware Paco can be seen as the
hero who goes to die for nation. However, Paco is said to be an expert in
matters of war, an official. Officials don’t die in war. In this light I
believe, of course, he must be seen representing a military, heroic, selfless
myth. But also, the pragmatist intellectual, the realist - In 1995 Spain had
its second turn presiding over the council - who gets a good role for Spain in
the EU. Of course he is quickly de-legitimized, if he ever was legitimate, when we
discovered he had cheated on Leo with her best friend.
The regional reaction to both
national and European discourse is summed up well in the mother’s phrase: “Me
voy al pueblo.” Leo goes with her and from there on recovers. I’m aware these
scenes can be seen as somewhat satiric, but I am not convinced there’s a
de-legitimation of ‘regional discourse’. For example, the suffering of the
novel that was thrown to the garbage is redeemed – and not ironically, as the
thief confesses, and offers to pay, and she herself (very important) consents
to the act - when it provides the founds for the traditional dance were Blanca
wears a Flamenco crest and her son an Andalusian style vest.
Furthermore, if there’s no regional
identity, the postmodern outlook and ironic tone of the movie could be
expressed concisely in Leo’s employer’s phrase: “reality should be prohibited.”
The fall of utopias, be them capitalist, communist, fascist or whatever else,
leaves society (especially mass culture) with basically the cynic’s outlook of
life. Evidently Almodobar cannot be equated with The Simpson’s, however, this would
be indeed a worrying rejection of all sources of common identity, not
necessarily good for democracy, or happiness for that matter.
Now, Leo’s suffering was redeemed, she
reconciles with her extended family, and she who mocks rose colored novels, has
a rose colored ending – and her lover continues the rose colored novels -. She
even has a ‘return home’ after the journey, death and resurrection in
Campbell’s monomyth fashion.
Camí-Vela mentions a process of
renewal (p. 177), a continuing process of self-searching of the nation in the
context of European integration (p.122). Here I must mention “The myth of the
eternal return” and “the terror of history[2]”
(the death of nation). The movie reflects very well the idea of gold
age-romance, decadence-suffering, death and return to origins. The question
that remains is, given that there’s a crisis of identity; will there be a
solution other than the cynic’s solution that is Romantic-comedies for Bread
and circuses? If it’s not a return to some moderate form of group identity, I
don’t know what it might be.
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