An uncharacteristic film by Bunuel. There is a critique of bourgeois and Catholic morals, but the story plays out mainly like a thriller.
The idea is original and curious. A young man, overly spoiled by women, who hides in the closet with his mother's clothes, creates the illusion of having the power of life and death over the women around him, through a music box that his mother offers him, with a ballerina, in a misogyny that accompanies him into adulthood.
Whether this power is real or imaginary is a cruel game, not only for the protagonist, who thinks he is guilty of crimes, which he did not commit, but desired and even planned, and for the spectator, who is deliberately cast into the doubt of how much of what he sees is real, or simply the protagonist's imagination.
In fact, all crimes are strange and surreal. The nanny is shot dead by a revolutionary, while she was at the window of the house, peacefully watching an attack by revolutionaries, she and the child remaining strangely serene, undaunted, in the middle of the shooting. But the narrator is clear in mentioning that the civil war spared his small town and family, right at the beginning of the film. An inconsistency? I don't believe it.
The daring young woman who uses him to make her rich lover jealous commits suicide by cutting her own neck with a razor, following an argument with that same lover, who she so despised and lived with out of pure interest. Nothing could be more unlikely, mainly because cutting women's throats was the protagonist's favorite fantasy.
The bride, who he plans to kill on her wedding day, having discovered the day before, through an anonymous note, that she had a previous relationship with an architect, dies shot, not by him, but by the architect, who was deceived, exchanged, by the bride, by an older and richer man. Who would have sent the note? The architect himself, with the unfulfilled hope of breaking up the marriage out of jealousy of the groom? Did the failure of the plan, since the wedding was celebrated anyway, motivate the fatal revenge? Or did the groom give up on the wedding, after beeing revealed it's real motivations?
The young tour guide, who he tries to strangle, during that strange encounter with a woman and her replica, in the form of a mannequin, another surreal game so much to the director's taste, does not die. On the contrary, it is the mannequin who suffers the suitor's misogynistic revenge, disappearing melted in the oven, to finally give way to a normal romantic relationship, after being cleared by the police, after having thrown the music box, the symbol of his misogyny, into the lake, and lying down the cane he used, a symbol of rejuvenation or even a psychological rebirth of the character.
A surreal thriller, made up of the protagonist's misogynistic illusions, finally cured by the sincere and disinterested love of a free and unprejudiced woman.
The idea is original and curious. A young man, overly spoiled by women, who hides in the closet with his mother's clothes, creates the illusion of having the power of life and death over the women around him, through a music box that his mother offers him, with a ballerina, in a misogyny that accompanies him into adulthood.
Whether this power is real or imaginary is a cruel game, not only for the protagonist, who thinks he is guilty of crimes, which he did not commit, but desired and even planned, and for the spectator, who is deliberately cast into the doubt of how much of what he sees is real, or simply the protagonist's imagination.
In fact, all crimes are strange and surreal. The nanny is shot dead by a revolutionary, while she was at the window of the house, peacefully watching an attack by revolutionaries, she and the child remaining strangely serene, undaunted, in the middle of the shooting. But the narrator is clear in mentioning that the civil war spared his small town and family, right at the beginning of the film. An inconsistency? I don't believe it.
The daring young woman who uses him to make her rich lover jealous commits suicide by cutting her own neck with a razor, following an argument with that same lover, who she so despised and lived with out of pure interest. Nothing could be more unlikely, mainly because cutting women's throats was the protagonist's favorite fantasy.
The bride, who he plans to kill on her wedding day, having discovered the day before, through an anonymous note, that she had a previous relationship with an architect, dies shot, not by him, but by the architect, who was deceived, exchanged, by the bride, by an older and richer man. Who would have sent the note? The architect himself, with the unfulfilled hope of breaking up the marriage out of jealousy of the groom? Did the failure of the plan, since the wedding was celebrated anyway, motivate the fatal revenge? Or did the groom give up on the wedding, after beeing revealed it's real motivations?
The young tour guide, who he tries to strangle, during that strange encounter with a woman and her replica, in the form of a mannequin, another surreal game so much to the director's taste, does not die. On the contrary, it is the mannequin who suffers the suitor's misogynistic revenge, disappearing melted in the oven, to finally give way to a normal romantic relationship, after being cleared by the police, after having thrown the music box, the symbol of his misogyny, into the lake, and lying down the cane he used, a symbol of rejuvenation or even a psychological rebirth of the character.
A surreal thriller, made up of the protagonist's misogynistic illusions, finally cured by the sincere and disinterested love of a free and unprejudiced woman.