Timeless Belle Epoque

Belle Epoque

directed by Fernando Trueba starring Jorge Sanz, Ariadna Gil and Fernando Fernan Gomez

Normally, watching the awarding of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film is a painful and disappointing experience. Instead of rewarding excellent or innovative films, the stolid voters usually opt for something ponderous and portentous--recall the year that the excruciatingly tedious "Pelle the Conqueror' won over "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." So it was refreshing to watch this year's Oscar go to the Spanish entry, Fernando Trueba's "Belle Epoque." Trueba's film isn't necessarily a cinematic masterpiece, something like "The Piano." But given Trueba's more modest goal of entertainment, the film succeeds quite well.

The film opens in Spain in 1931, as the monarchy is about to collapse. Fernando (Jorge Sanz, last seen literally engaging in hanky-panky with Victoria Abril in "Lovers"), a young and ripely handsome soldier, ex-seminarian and cook par excellence, deserts from the army and wanders around the countryside. He runs into Don Manolo, a witty and iconoclastic old painter played by the venerable Fernando Fernan Gomez.

Fernando stays at Don Manolo's rambling estate and cooks up a storm; the two become fast friends, and Don Monolo confides in Fernando his three regrets in life. "The first was not being born among heathens. Second, because of my feet I wasn't called up for the army--so I couldn't desert. And third, it so happens that I can only get it up with my wife. So I can't cheat. You see the paradox. As I couldn't rebel against the Church or the army or matrimony, here I am, a rebel, an infidel and a libertine by nature, living life like a scared bourgeois."

Though they are having a great time, Don Manolo tells Fernando to leave because his four daughters are arriving from Madrid, and he couldn't bear to have to lose Fernando as a friend in order to gain a son-in-law. Don Manolo takes Fernando to the train station just as the train from Madrid is pulling in. When he sees Don Manolo's daughters descending from the train, each young woman more beautiful than the previous one, Fernando decides that he isn't going anywhere. It's lovely scene, and Sanz's face has the right look of idiocy and incredulity at being confronted with such a wealth of beauty and femininity.

Fernando moves back into the house, which Don Manolo's daughters have filled with light and air and gaity. It's the perfect visualization of the atmosphere in Oscar Hijuelos' novel The Fourteen Sister of Emilio Montez O'Brien. Trueba definitely has a feel for the material, and a sure touch with his actresses.

Rocio (Maribel Verdu) is a coquettish imp who wastes no time in dragging Fernando into bed. Violeta (Ariadna Gil) is a lesbian who wears her hair short and likes tailored clothing. She has what is arguably the best scene in the film. During a carnival masquerade in the town, Violeta dresses in Fernando's uniform and the sisters dress Fernando as a French maid. Violeta leads Fernando in a lascivious, passionate, hilarious tango, much better than Al Pacino's in "Scent of a Woman." She then takes Fernando to a barn and h as her way with him in the hay.

During his Oscar acceptance speech, Trueba equated Billy Wilder with God, and it is in this scene that Wilder's influence comes through most strongly. In drag, Sanz bears a striking resemblance to Tony Curtis in Wilder's "Some Like It Hot," and the whole carnival sequence in "Belle Epoque" smacks of the landmark 1959 film.