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With slow deliberation, a girl lays her head down
on railroad tracks as a
oncoming train plows forward. So begins Vicente Aranda's second feature,
a film steeped in melancholy, ruminations on suicide, unspoken secrets,
and repressed emotions. A publisher of pulp horror novels (Estrada)
receives an anonymous yellow package containing a human hand. He buries
it in a nearby park. The next yellow package he receives, he leaves
unopened on a bench in the city. When he arrives home, the package is
awaiting him. This one contains a torn up dress and a photograph of
a girl. He feebly attempts to lie about the contents to his wife (Gimpera).
When he receives a yellow envelope containing a necklace with a silver
fist at the end, he spots the woman in black (Capucine) who has been
giving him so much attention. Without a word, he enters her car. She
drives him to her remote home, where she feeds him lysergic acid
embedded in red blotting paper. Suddenly, he is ambling down a long
corridor drawn towards a woman's voice lamenting her lost love. He
reaches the end of the hallway to discover the voice emanating from a
tape recorder. He finds a woman's body in a refrigerator curled up,
pale, but immaculate. When he awakens from the drugged stupor he is back
at home, his body covered in a jaundiced yellow. Who was the woman in
the refrigerator? In a flashback, the young woman (Matheson) is in a
coffee shop fiddling with some pills. She appears bored, yet eager to
flirt with the older publisher. Her name is Esther and she reveals her
sign to be Cancer. In another fragment of the past, the newly formed
couple is out near the sea. As she edges toward the cliff, she says,
"I'd die so that my love for you will last. So that indifference
will not kill it." Through the collective memories of the
publisher, his wife, the detective that she hired to spy on her husband,
and the mysterious woman, the corrosion of the romance is recounted. Her
eventual suicide, which is not the gruesome demise the opening scene
promises, turns out to be tragically quiet. So much so that her undying
admirer, Capucine's character, must avenge the callousness that broke
her heart.
LAS CRUELES (or THE EXQUISITE CADAVER as it's known in the U.S.)
combines a youthful approach to film techniques and a colorful pop-art
aesthetic with a story of psychological torment and weird horror. It's a
sensibility that encompasses director Vicente Aranda's early films, from
FATA MORGANA (1965) to LA NOVIA ENSANGRENTADA (1972). In this film,
Aranda employs some striking stylistics such as the scene of the
publisher leaving one of his yellow packages in a busy plaza. In its use
of telephoto lenses that keep the publisher at a distance, surveillance
camera-like angles, and the simple use of ambient sounds, this scene has
a detached modernistic feel. The LSD scene is haunting in its use of the
young woman's taped suicide note, the slow backwards tracking shot of
the publisher walking down the corridor, brief flashback shots of the
couple embracing, and the expressionistic montage of close-ups of the
young woman's naked body accompanied by a pulsating industrial noise.
Although Aranda would develop a more naturalistic style in his later
erotic thrillers and historical melodramas, the extreme emotions and
torment would remain. The central story of LAS CRUELES, that of a woman
being destroyed by the powerful yet fickle passions of a man, is echoed
in Aranda's AMANTES (1991), INTRUSO (1993), LA PASIÓN TURCA (1994), and
CELOS (1999) (his CARMEN [2003] can be seen as a gender reversal of this
theme). It is worth noting that the filmmakers took inspiration from
Marianna Alcoforado's passionate "Letters of a Portuguese Nun"
in Esther's eloquent monologues. While Esther's death is central to the
film, Capucine's role is the most memorable as the sorrowful avenger of
the young woman. With her gaunt features complimented by a large,
swooping black hat Capucine is the embodiment of mystery. Her servant is
a pale young man in black. She has an artificial left hand. Her love for
the young woman is immense and unrequited. This is all we know of her.
It is a wonderful role, and Capucine plays it with such sadness that it
is difficult not to reflect on her real-life suicide.
-- Reviewed by Adam Williams
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