Antonieta

A rare dud by Saura. A French psychologist (Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla) is researching female suicide and travels to Mexico to study the life of Antonieta Rivas Mercado (Isabella Adjani), a writer and political activist who shot herself in Notre Dame. This wasn't Saura's project, he basically did it as a director-for-hire, and there's little to no passion in it. Very uneventful and dull, a lot of political information but not much insight into Antonieta's interior life. We get a sense of why she's important to Mexican culture, but not why she's a character worth spending time with. The few interesting moments (particularly when Schygulla "meets" Adjani) are overwhelmed by dry biographical data, with Adjani pretty much sleepwalking through the role. It didn't help that the DVD was wretched, clearly transferred from a VHS source, and a poor one at that.