Having gone on bicycle tours across parts of America and China, I was immediately interested in this story about a couple involved in an illicit affair who accidentally kills a cyclist on the way home from a shady rendezvous, and decide to leave the man, still alive, to die on the road rather than take responsibility for their actions. You see, they would face not only the criminal repercussions of vehicular manslaughter (whatever that implies in Franco- controlled Spain), but also the destruction of their reputations, which is presented as the worse of the two consequences.
I studied Spanish cinema when I was in college several years ago, but a lot of what I have learned about Franco's stifling regime and its effect on the film industry has faded somewhat. Mostly what I remember from that class is that Pedro Almodovar films are just not my thing. But the social commentary about upper class life in mid 1950s Spain is still pretty clear, and my understanding is that it was a scathing indictment of parts of the upper class at the time of its release, and I always appreciate movies like that.
Maria and Juan are involved in an extramarital affair, and after the accident, they agree to cover it up but their guilt evolves in different directions, allowing for some almost Hitchcockian suspense through much of the movie. There is a man named Rafa who apparently saw something, and there is a wonderful device for suspense as Juan and Maria try to discover if he just saw them together in the car, which would have been an unseemly act in itself because they are both married, and not to each other, or if he also saw the accident. They don't know and neither do we, and you can feel the strain that it puts on them as their "normal" worlds gradually crumble.
It's interesting the way the police involvement is portrayed. There are two motorcycle cops discussing the dead cyclist and hypothesizing about how he was killed. The prevailing theory seems to be that it was a truck, and they laugh at the suggestion that it was a couple on an illicit affair. Maybe they don't realize how strange truth can be sometimes.
The development of the story involving Rafa is also beautifully handed. He holds this threat of exposure over Juan's and Maria's head, finally in a drunken rage telling Maria's husband the whole story about the affair. This is a frightening occurrence, but he doesn't believe Rafa, basically condemning him as a liar but clearly looking at his wife in a slightly different way from then on. It is uncertain at this point whether Rafa's revelation of what he saw and Miguel (Maria's husband) not believing him will cancel out the Rafa threat or only serve to pull the rope tighter, as now Miguel will be watching both of them even more closely.
The social commentary is at it's most obvious in two particular scenes in the film. One is one in which the students at Juan's school where he teaches gather en masse outside of his office, organized to demand his resignation because of a supposed love affair that he had with one of his students. That student comes upstairs to talk to him, and he tells her that the demonstration doesn't bother him at all. It doesn't matter if they want him fired or promoted, he explains to her. "They just want to shout."
Later, after the threat of Rafa seems to have been removed (and after he inadvertently let them know that he didn't see the accident after all, Maria becomes visibly relaxed and tells Juan that she hopes they can do something for the victim's family, "Now that we're safe."
Juan, however, wants them to turn themselves in, leading to a great tense scene near the end where he is trying to convince her that they should go to the police, while she is sitting behind the wheel of her can, contemplating running him down. One of the things that the movie does best is to show that lies beget more lies, and covered crimes can also lead to more crimes.
Unfortunately, the end of the movie drags a bit, running too long for the tension to remain high, giving it a feeling that it is spread a little too thin. There is a nice piece of symbolism in a beautifully framed shot near the end of the movie that is so good that it seems automatically to become the iconographic image of the film. It's an interesting story of deception and murder and the subsequent effects of trying to get away with it in an oppressive society. A fascinating depiction of disintegrating upper class Spanish life!
I studied Spanish cinema when I was in college several years ago, but a lot of what I have learned about Franco's stifling regime and its effect on the film industry has faded somewhat. Mostly what I remember from that class is that Pedro Almodovar films are just not my thing. But the social commentary about upper class life in mid 1950s Spain is still pretty clear, and my understanding is that it was a scathing indictment of parts of the upper class at the time of its release, and I always appreciate movies like that.
Maria and Juan are involved in an extramarital affair, and after the accident, they agree to cover it up but their guilt evolves in different directions, allowing for some almost Hitchcockian suspense through much of the movie. There is a man named Rafa who apparently saw something, and there is a wonderful device for suspense as Juan and Maria try to discover if he just saw them together in the car, which would have been an unseemly act in itself because they are both married, and not to each other, or if he also saw the accident. They don't know and neither do we, and you can feel the strain that it puts on them as their "normal" worlds gradually crumble.
It's interesting the way the police involvement is portrayed. There are two motorcycle cops discussing the dead cyclist and hypothesizing about how he was killed. The prevailing theory seems to be that it was a truck, and they laugh at the suggestion that it was a couple on an illicit affair. Maybe they don't realize how strange truth can be sometimes.
The development of the story involving Rafa is also beautifully handed. He holds this threat of exposure over Juan's and Maria's head, finally in a drunken rage telling Maria's husband the whole story about the affair. This is a frightening occurrence, but he doesn't believe Rafa, basically condemning him as a liar but clearly looking at his wife in a slightly different way from then on. It is uncertain at this point whether Rafa's revelation of what he saw and Miguel (Maria's husband) not believing him will cancel out the Rafa threat or only serve to pull the rope tighter, as now Miguel will be watching both of them even more closely.
The social commentary is at it's most obvious in two particular scenes in the film. One is one in which the students at Juan's school where he teaches gather en masse outside of his office, organized to demand his resignation because of a supposed love affair that he had with one of his students. That student comes upstairs to talk to him, and he tells her that the demonstration doesn't bother him at all. It doesn't matter if they want him fired or promoted, he explains to her. "They just want to shout."
Later, after the threat of Rafa seems to have been removed (and after he inadvertently let them know that he didn't see the accident after all, Maria becomes visibly relaxed and tells Juan that she hopes they can do something for the victim's family, "Now that we're safe."
Juan, however, wants them to turn themselves in, leading to a great tense scene near the end where he is trying to convince her that they should go to the police, while she is sitting behind the wheel of her can, contemplating running him down. One of the things that the movie does best is to show that lies beget more lies, and covered crimes can also lead to more crimes.
Unfortunately, the end of the movie drags a bit, running too long for the tension to remain high, giving it a feeling that it is spread a little too thin. There is a nice piece of symbolism in a beautifully framed shot near the end of the movie that is so good that it seems automatically to become the iconographic image of the film. It's an interesting story of deception and murder and the subsequent effects of trying to get away with it in an oppressive society. A fascinating depiction of disintegrating upper class Spanish life!