With an age difference of fifty years, veteran journalist Miguel (José Sacristán) and beginner Ángela (María Valverde) are able to cover a lot of ground, roving from the effects of the Spanish Civil War to American writers and, inescapably, on to the socio-political Pandora's Box opened up at the end of the Franco dictatorship: a period of four decades of repression followed by many years of exploring new-found social freedoms (still on-going in the 21st century). Ángela's fascistic father and Miguel's wife remain off-stage.
By way of synchronicity, I was reading Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake's Life with Picasso (1964) at the same time as watching Madrid, 1987, so it doesn't seem at all far-fetched even as a realistic movie. Gilot and Picasso (another Spaniard, by the way) were forty years apart in age and there are a couple of scenes in Madrid, 1987 that are reminiscent of their early interactions. The main setting is -- coincidence? -- the inside of an artist's apartment. If an artist's space can't be free of ordinary convention, where's the fun in being there?
Today's Rune: Defense.
2 comments:
I can't imagine what I'd have in common with a woman that much younger than I.
One wonders how the story might have played out without the vast age difference.
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