"Matador's Mistress" might be profitably viewed - and not so easily underestimated - if we try to see it as a work of art in its own right, that is, as much more than a dramatic tribute to the legendary bull-fighter Manolete or a cinematic rendering of his great passion for Lupe. Manolete's tale has been elevated to an archetypal tragedy of Love-Death. Director Meyjes has put right under our noses the mad mechanics of our wildest dream, in full confidence that it will fascinate romantic viewers without their fully registering what's going on.
But the clues to a psychological study of machismo are all here. Why else does the film open with the brazen insult that Lupe has scrawled in lipstick on Manolete's mirror, an act of humiliation, ripping into her lover's essential wound? And why does it alternate, so suggestively, the scene of Manolete's and Lupe's love-making with that of the fight in which Manolete daringly caresses the bull? And Manolete's relation to his mother, plainly making Lupe her surrogate? This romance turns on the little secret that he gives up in his sexual climax, in the little death that secretly prepares the viewer for his last words. Whatever the historical relationship between these lovers, it has been taken up artfully into an exploration of the matador's psyche, and by extension, the psyche of Spain.
Lupe plays a cruel game with Manolete, because the psychic roots of his devotion are so exposed, more than any woman wants to see. Yet the film asks: is there ever any other source of obsession with Woman? Lupe can only despise Manolete, even as she is ravished by him. Such a love can only find one resolution.
A genuine work of art.
But the clues to a psychological study of machismo are all here. Why else does the film open with the brazen insult that Lupe has scrawled in lipstick on Manolete's mirror, an act of humiliation, ripping into her lover's essential wound? And why does it alternate, so suggestively, the scene of Manolete's and Lupe's love-making with that of the fight in which Manolete daringly caresses the bull? And Manolete's relation to his mother, plainly making Lupe her surrogate? This romance turns on the little secret that he gives up in his sexual climax, in the little death that secretly prepares the viewer for his last words. Whatever the historical relationship between these lovers, it has been taken up artfully into an exploration of the matador's psyche, and by extension, the psyche of Spain.
Lupe plays a cruel game with Manolete, because the psychic roots of his devotion are so exposed, more than any woman wants to see. Yet the film asks: is there ever any other source of obsession with Woman? Lupe can only despise Manolete, even as she is ravished by him. Such a love can only find one resolution.
A genuine work of art.