Being along with Cine-Excess the main UK film festival that I look forward to attending, I decided to take one final look at the line-up for VIVA:The 29th Spanish & Latin American Manchester Film Festival before ordering my last batch of tickets. Having gone for Vamonos, Barbara (1978-also reviewed) as soon as tickets went on sale,I was excited to learn that the day after her feature film was shown, that two obscure shorts by director Cecilia Bartolome were being played with English Subtitles for the first time, this led to me going to meet Barbara.
View on the film:
One of only two women who were on the movie course at the university, and finding herself blacklisted for years,after the university sent this, her final student film, to the film censors run under General Franco, writer/director Cecilia Bartolome mocks the power/ judgement towards women that men held in Franco-era Spain, with a witty needle drop of the Mission Impossible theme in the opening courtroom scene, as Margarita (played with a wicked playfulness by Los desafios (1969-also reviewed) lead actress Julia Pena) does the mission impossible, and gets granted a divorce from her husband (this being a subject Bartolome would return to in Let's Go, Barbara (1978-also reviewed.)
Closely working with cinematographer Ricardo Duque in her loose adaptation of Christiane Rochefort's novel Les stances a Sophie, Bartolome opens up flashbacks to the events that lead to the divorce, with an extraordinary, Left Bank- inspired atmosphere, running on outstanding, experimental freeze frames, jagged camera moves and surreal Musical numbers which jab at authority, and roll out to a mesmerizing, 4th wall breaking final shot on Margarita.
