Tristana (1970) – 3/5

Not a legendary movie, but another solid addition to Buñuel’s body of work

„Tristana“ is a co-production between France, Italy and Spain from 1970, so this film is now easily over half a century old. The three countries I just mentioned are really the ones that defined the career of writer and director Luis Buñuel, especially Spain and France. He won the Oscar a little later when representing France in the foreign language category, but with this film here he represented Spain and scored another nomination. We can say so, even if the nomination was not directly to his name, but this is really only due to Academy regulations. He was the big driving force by far behind this project. The film runs for slightly under 100 minutes, so not one of Buñuel’s longest works, but also not one of his shortest. It was pretty much his standard runtime. Durations over two hours were not his thing. And there is more standard to Buñuel in this movie here: Fernando Rey once again plays the main character in a Buñuel movie and he does so with excellence as he always does. You can even call this film one of a trilogy almost (I have seen three films so far, the one with Bouquet, „Viridiana“ and this one here, cannot rule out that there is more) that has Rey or I should say his characters pursue considerably younger women in a romantic fashion. There are films where his characters are miserable, also on the likable side here and there, but you will never find a movie where the girl of his interest is really interested in him too, which is of course a constant source of conflict. If an actor played such similar characters on repeated occasions now in the 21st century, probably many audience members would see the actor as creepy too at some point. Which is pretty sad, but this far it has become already. Anyway, Rey managed to score some really impressive awards attention for his portrayal here. The vast majority of attention here also came from Spanish awards bodies, which makes it really clear that this is a film that is as much of a Spanish production as it gets. Also makes sense if you look at the writers. Maybe the names Julio Alejandro and Benito Pérez Galdós will not sound familiar to you, but one was Buñuel’s collaborator on the screenplay here and in general a highly prolific Spanish film writer and the other wrote the base material in the 19th century already and they are also both from Spain.

What maybe led people a bit away from the Spanish component is French actress Catherine Deneuve being first credit and playing the title character. She will turn 80 later this year. And the biggest male supporting player is Franco Nero, who originates from Italy and well he is a film icon in his own right too. Both him and Deneuve are still acting it seems. Impressive. Nero even appeared in a series called „Django“ that takes him a bit back to his roots, but back to this film here now that we wanna talk about today: There are some pretty tough inclusions in here in terms of physical injury too, but it is nothing too unusual for Buñuel. The biggest one is of course Deneuve’s character losing her leg to cancer. They literally say they need to cut it off and even then they can only hope for the best. But still seems her life is saved this way as she lives during the ending credits. The same cannot be said about Rey’s character, but this is no big surprise really if you look at the foreshadowing on earlier occasions. Just take the title character’s recurring nightmare about the man’s severed head being used as part of a church bell. Now that was some bizarre and surrealist stuff. Buñuel in a nutshell. Also pay attention to how this kind of nightmare really shocks Tristana early on while she was not really particularly scared anymore later on. Or there was also this scene in which a dog gets shot because it has rabies or so. It was clear that one key character would die here and the longer the film went, the more obvious it became that it would not be the sick woman. The moment it happens is still haunting. We see the male lead have a heart attack or so and Tristana pretends that she is calling the doctor, but she really is not and wants to let him die. Then again, it would not have changed anything at all because he was already dead when she returns to his bedroom and no doctor could have been there fast enough to save him. It still says nothing too positive about the woman, even if she despises the man, but at that point probably all she wanted was get away from him. Remember how he comforted her when she had that nightmare and really did all he could that she would have a decent life after her surgery.

But of course there is the one aspect that really makes it difficult to like him as well, namely that he wants sexual pleasure in return from her and I am not even talking here about the aspect that he was her uncle. Biological I think even, even if I am not 100% sure there, but back then this was not such a big think and incest really only existed between siblings as a bit of a taboo or between parents and children. Everything beyond that was kinda tolerated and there is not even any talk in here that elaborates on this. What can also be said about his film here is that we do get a brief elaboration on the man’s own family background that is also not super harmonic. We see that when his sister comes into play. Very briefly. Her death is more memorable than her presence here. But oh well, one thing that caught my attention were the looks of the characters and how they resembled other famous people. Maybe it was just me, but Nero for example looked a lot like a mix between Terence Hill and Ian Somerhalder it was I think. Lola Gaos, who was surely younger here than her character looked like reminded me of Senta Berger,, although I am sure that Gaos was the far more versatile actress, not that it needed much to be better than Berger. Oh yeah and Deneuve especially reminded me so much of Sarah Paulson here, like in almost every single scene. Maybe it was her slightly darker hair that also contributed to that, but the resemblance was striking and I was surprised myself that I never saw this before.

But anyway, Buñuel and Deneuve also worked together on (at least) one other film that is probably still much more known than this one here. I am of course talking about „Belle de Jour“ and I watched that one also on another occasion not too long ago. But back to this one here that I saw as part of the Buñuel retrospective: I will just so dome brainstorming now for the rest of the review. Of course, the film is in color and there was one character named Saturna and another named Saturno, which initially confused me a bit because these two names are also not super common in Spain, at least nowadays, not sure what it was back then, but I do not know any celebrities or famous actors carrying this name in the 21st century. Or don’t even know any from back then, so the male and female variation in the same movie came unexpected. Buñuel always enjoyed going for controversy and with somebody like Deneuve at his disposal, it would have been a huge surprise if he had not brough in sexuality there. There is still less, maybe even considerably less, than in his other films, but the scene in which she exposes herself in front of the boy there stayed in the mind. When she was on the balcony or at the window or what it was and at that point Nero’s character had already left her. Because of her struggles with her health or what she turned into because of them and I am talking about her character there, not her physicality. It did something with her and even if she despises Rey’s character, especially when he treats her with care, she says occasionally stuff about the old man that he is smart and right with a lot he says. Actually, she says that she really appreciates him as a father figure and wishes that this could have been all he wanted.

The two most important men in her life also have meetings that could not be any more different from each other. There is something like a physical altercation almost when Rey’s character comes to the younger’s place and there seems to be the possibility for a duel with guns between the two, but eventually it is not meant to happen. Another meeting then between the two is when the young man comes to ask the older man for help and there they are fairly harmonic as they both want Deneuve’s character to get better. They do care for her, even if she despises them both at some point. Just look at Rey’s character’s words that he would be ready to gave one of his limbs to make her fully healthy again. Of course, this is not how biology and medicine work. The one thing this film never really is is a comedy. I am not even sure if there was one single occasion or two or none that had me smile, but there was nothing that truly made me laugh. If anything, then the humor may be in the subtlety, like when we have Rey’s character sick and really struggling from influenza or whatever else he has there and of course he does not want Deneuve’s character to see him as an ailing old man there, but of course she does. His comment about how young men would deal way worse with this illness and suffer far more obviously was a bit on the comedic side, but yeah you see I have to dig deep here for sure for remotely funny content like this. So I don’t even keep trying. Overall, I am glad I went to see this movie and it was a decent watch, but I would not say it is among Buñuel’s best and also certainly not among his worst. Maybe the color helped me here in appreciating this film enough for a positive recommendation, but in terms of female leads, I cannot rank Tristana ahead of Viridiana for example and absolutely not in front of Bouquet’s aforementioned character. Or movie. Seeing „Tristana“ is an alright choice, but once is enough and it also does not have to be at a movie theater. I still give the outcome a thumbs-up though, even if I would put the Yordle girl as well ahead of Deneuve. Anytime. Yordles rock!