Memories, Dreams, Reflections
The best and latest from Spain
Santiago Segura‘s Torrente: Mission in Marbella, the follow-up to his hilarious gross-out fiesta Torrente: The Dumb Arm of the Law, fits into two categories dear to American movies: It’s a sequel and a cop spoof. (With its sexy, greasily twisted Bond-style title sequence, it even raids Austin Powers territory.) Yet Segura, who wrote, directed and stars, doesn‘t fall into the American trap of creating a type -- instead, he creates a character, and steadfastly resists any and all opportunities to make him likable. Torrente is not only monumentally stupid and a physical coward, he’s corrupt (not above stealing purses from old ladies, if he feels he‘s in the right), a card-carrying fascist (he nostalgically names his dog Franco) and, just when you think you’re about to forgive him, a racist who pees in public swimming pools. Such willingness to really look at character, to take on -- and be held accountable for -- what people are truly capable of, good and bad, is a necessary grace in films of any nationality.
In Spain such excellence is of a piece with the culture‘s anti-puritanical stance in relation to sex, as well as its stoic views of heroism and death. In the U.S., good drama and good comedy both grow, as Roman Polanski put it, “out of the compromises that are not made.” Once again, as ever, Spanish film demonstrates the beauty and vitality inherent in resisting any compromise at all.
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