LOVERS: A TRUE STORY Movie Review
Amantes
Paco (Jorge Sanz), a young man recently discharged from the army, searches for a job and an apartment so that he can begin to earn enough money to make an honest woman of his sweet and trusting fiancee, Trini (Maribel Verdu). But Paco doesn't realize that the apartment building he chooses comes complete with a scheming, sexually insatiable (and inventive) landlady, Luisa (Victoria Abril). Soon poor Trini is willing to sacrifice her virginity just to regain Paco from the landlady's clutches, but Luisa isn't about to give up so easily. Set in Franco's Spain of the 1950s, Lovers could have been a grindingly predictable melodrama were it not for the wry and resourceful direction of Vincente Aranda, who balances the story between Buñuelian irony and James M. Cain—style intensity. The sex scenes in Lovers between Paco and Luisa are something to see, and they're persuasive enough to make Paco's confusion and malleability perfectly understandable. Victoria Abril took the Best Actress Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance here, and you'll get no argument from me. As evil as Luisa may be, Abril manages to make her sexual frenzy so needy and intense that she becomes a surprisingly sympathetic figure, even while luring an innocent young couple to their doom and edging the picture tantalizingly close to soft porn (I give this movie's scarf scene the edge over Last Tango in Paris's famous butter sequence, if for nothing else than sheer surprise). Abril is a versatile and stunning actress who's appeared in some of Pedro Almodóvar's films, yet never had the breakthrough role that would give her name recognition with a wider American audience. When you see Lovers, however, you will remember her.
NEXT STOP … The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Ossessione, Tristana.
1990 (R) 105m/C SP Victoria Abril, Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdu; D: Vicente Aranda; W: Vicente Aranda, Alvaro del Amo; C: Jose Luis Alcaine; M: Jose Nieto. Berlin International Film Festival '91: Best Actress (Abril). VHS REP