Tristana [VHS]

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Tristana [VHS] Review

Bunuel made this film after "Belle du Jour," using Catherine Deneuve as the heroine for both films. Whereas "Belle du Jour" was a foretaste of the sophisticated, chic French movies he made in the seventies, "Tristana" is in some ways a throwback to the rough, psychologically disturbing Spanish movies he made in the fifties and sixties. Both modes have their advantages, but for depth of feeling and psychological insight his Spanish films are clearly better. (His French films are more subtly satirical and international in scope, but he seems to have put less of his personal obsessions in them than in the films made in his native Spanish idiom. Or, rather, in the French films the obsessions now have the streamlined pedigree endowed upon them by the international film community's recognition of the World's Greatest Spanish Director.) Fernando Rey is the quintessential Spanish gentleman--a little bit of brutishness mixed in with the refinement--but he also gets to suggest emotional depths here (and in "Viridiana") that he did not in his other films with Bunuel where he seemed merely slyly charming and debonair. His desperate passion for Deneuve's Tristana is the emotional center of the film, despite the title's emphasis on the heroine. Deneuve's beauty is, of course, flawless and this suits Tristana's early stages when she's sweet, innocent, naive. But Deneuve's ice princess qualities prevent her from growing into the passion for the young artist (Franco Nero) that signal her growth as a woman. Both Rey and Nero register their emotions in a fierce animal way that is perhaps more purely Spanish (or Italian in Nero's case) than Deneuve's rarefied French blood will allow. She seems too cold and refined for big emotions. She's effective in the latter scenes where the script calls for her to become a coldhearted perverse witch, rudely dismissing a friendly greeting in the park in Toledo or scandalously exposing herself to the deaf mute son of her servant. But we don't see the hatred for Rey eating away at her that would allow her to have her final victory over him. We don't see the rage of this young girl toward the men who have let her down: first Rey for bringing her as a young girl into his household as his mistress, then Nero for allowing her to experience passion but disappointing her by returning her to Rey when she gets ill (she says to Nero, "Lope [Rey] would never have done that"--i.e., he's too proud and by implication more of a man). And then rage at Rey again for being stuck with him as his mistress for the rest of her years. When she condescends to marry Rey for appearances' sake, she cruelly laughs at his expectation that their union will be consummated. She's saying to him, "You silly man. I married you to please a priest and to inherit your wealth; don't delude yourself that I care about you." The dramatic situation is fascinating and it's somewhat frustrating that it's not entirely realized, largely due to Deneuve's limitations as an actress. Still, there have been few directors other than Bunuel who could bring so much to the material without softening it and sentimentalizing it. His style here is the plain, non-fussy technique that made him infamous (allegedly, he was once offered Fellini's cinematographer but turned him down in favor of the pedestrian camera work of a fellow Spaniard). Bunuel's style is an affront on bourgeois expectations of a rich mise-en-scene or a style that calls attention to its own artistic, innovative qualities. It can be slow going and even seem boring in the beginning stages, but in the best of Bunuel--as in "Tristana"--it can reward the patient viewer with psychological revelations of a truth uncommonly encountered on the screen.

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