Lovers () is a 1991 Spanish film noir written and directed by Vicente Aranda, starring Victoria Abril, Jorge Sanz and Maribel Verdú. The film brought Aranda to widespread attention in the English-speaking world. It won two Goya Awards (Best Film and Best Director) and is considered one of the best Spanish films of the 1990s.
Plot In Madrid, in the mid-1950s, Paco - a handsome young man from the provinces, serving the last days of his military service - is in search of both lodging and a steady job. He is engaged to be married to his major's maid, Trini, who is not only sweet and pretty, but has also saved up a sizable amount of money through years of hard work and frugal living, which will enable her and Paco to start their lives together comfortably. With a factory job lined up, Paco moves out of his barracks and looks for somewhere to live until the wedding. Trini unwittingly refers him to Luisa, a beautiful widow who periodically takes in boarders and rents him a spare bedroom.
Besides supplementing her income with boarders, Luisa engages in swindles with underworld contracts, and is not above cheating her partners by skimming money off her illicit earnings. Instantly smitten by Paco, the attractive Luisa quickly seduces her new tenant. Frustrated by his unfruitful job hunt and by Trini's refusal to have sex with him until they are married, Paco offers little resistance when Luisa seduces him, initiating an affair. He is dazzled with the sexual delight to which she introduces him. So intense is Paco's attraction for Luisa, that he abandons Trini for long periods, finally showing up at the major's house to spend Christmas Eve with her. Trini feels a distance between herself and Paco, and while the couple are strolling in the street, she is surprised to see the 'old widow' and immediately guesses that she and Paco are having a relationship.
Trini seeks the advice of the major's wife, who tells her that she should use her own sexual powers to win Paco back. Waiting for Luisa to leave the apartment, Trini goes to Paco's room and gives herself to him, making sure that Luisa later sees her leaving. At first, her tactic works and Paco re-affirms his love for her, and they leave to visit Trini's mother in her village. However, Trini is no match for her rival as a lover, and Paco cannot get Luisa out of his mind.
When Paco and Trini come back to Madrid, he is willing to continue his twin relationship, but Luisa - who knows of Trini's existence - is wildly jealous of her rival. Things become more complicated for Paco by Luisa's shady business dealings with Minuta and Gordo, members of a gang of swindlers to whom she owes money. They have threatened her life, and Paco, attempting to aid his lover, suggests that he get the money by swindling Trini of her savings. Luisa would prefer that they simply kill Trini, but proposes that Paco should marry Trini, then steal her savings and run away with Luisa. Paco uneasily agrees.
The plan is for Paco to propose marriage to Trini and bring her to the provincial city of Aranda de Duero, where they have planned to purchase a bar. Under that pretense, Paco and Trini leave Madrid. Luisa follows them, unsure of Paco's resolve. While Trini is asleep, Paco steals the money from her handbag. He offers it to Luisa, but pulls out of their plan to flee together. Very upset, Luisa tells him he has botched the plan, and when he tells her to wait and, 'Things will be okay,' she excitedly utters, 'Kill her!', and walks away, tossing the money at her feet – it is Paco she wants. Paco retrieves the money, and, driven by guilt, he returns to Trini to explain the situation. After the disappearance of the money, Trini realises the fraud and understands that her love for Paco is doomed.
When Paco comes back to the hotel room and confesses the plan, Trini locks herself in the bathroom and attempts to commit suicide using Paco's razor. She is thwarted by Paco breaking the window and snatching the razor from her. Later, as the two sit in the rain on a bench in front of the cathedral of the town, Trini refuses to forgive Paco, and tells him she prefers death to abandonment. Thwarted in her attempt to cut her own wrist with Paco's razor, she begs him to kill her since that is what he really wants. He does so, then rushes to the train station to prevent Luisa from leaving. Placing his bloody hands on her compartment window, signalling to Luisa that the mission has been accomplished, she gets off the moving train. The couple embraces passionately on the platform, as the train pulls out. A title informs viewers that the police captured the pair, three days later.
Production and background Amantes had its origin in La huella del crimen, a Spanish anthology television series depicting infamous crimes that happened in Spain, and for which Vicente Aranda had directed the episode Captain Sánchez's Crime in 1984. The success of this production, made for Televisión Española (TVE), compelled producer Pedro Costa to develop a follow-up.José Luis Guarner, El Inquietante Cine de Vicente Aranda, Imagfic, D.L., 1985, p. 66 In the new installment of the series, there was to be an episode called Los Amantes de Tetuán (The Lovers of Tetuán), the story of a real life crime committed by a couple living in the district of Tetuán de las Victorias, a working class sector of Madrid. The actual crime took place in 1949 in La Canal, a small village near Burgos, and so it was also dubbed as 'El Crimen de La Canal' ('Crime at La Canal').
The event itself concerned a widow, Francisca Sánchez Morales, engaged in blackmailing and who persuaded a young man, José García San Juan, to kill his young wife, Dominga del Pino Rodríguez. Three days later, the couple were caught and never saw each other again. They were condemned to capital punishment, still prevailing by those years in Spain (not even their attorney wanted to defend them). Eventually, they got their sentences commuted and they served between ten and twelve years. The widow died of a heart attack just after leaving jail, and the young man started a new, anonymous and prosperous life in Zaragoza.
A re-interpretation of the crime was built up during the pre-production of Los Amantes de Tetuán. The script was written by Aranda, Alvaro del Amo, and Carlos Perez Merinero, using some elements of the actual crime and reinventing many others to recreate the background of the characters, about which little was known. The television project was halted from 1987 to 1990, and when the time came to start production, Los Amantes de Tetuán took a separate life from La Huella del Crimen. It was going to be the last chapter to be filmed because Vicente Aranda was immersed in the making of a mini-series for TVE. By then, Aranda was initially reluctant to make another production for television, and proposed to expand the script and make it into a full feature film for the big screen. Thanks to the recent success of his television mini-series, Los Jinetes del Alba, the project was approved by TVE.
The original title, Los Amantes de Tetuán, was shortened to simply Amantes to avoid confusion with the North African city of the same name. The events were moved from the 1940s to an unspecific time in the 1950s.In the film dialogue, Trini and Paco mention going to the movies to watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (film), which came out in May 1955. The setting would then be from Christmas 1955 to January 1956 for both economic and dramatic reasons. It was cheaper to recreate the period of the 1950s, and Aranda considered the decade more appealing for modern audiences. The real life crime story was treated in the same way Billy Wilder used the facts that inspired his adaptation of Double Indemnity, the novel by James M. Cain. Las Edades de Lulu, a movie directed by Bigas Luna and which had been seen by Aranda, inspired the eroticism of the film.
The most famous sequence of the film in which Luisa introduces a handkerchief in Paco’s anus, to withdraw it in the moment of climax, was not in the script. Aranda explained:
I told the actors that I felt something was lacking and that we needed something more explicit, a novelty. I opened a kind of contest and each one gave different options. Jorge Sanz came out with the idea of the handkerchief. The production was successful team collaboration. From the beginning at the preparation of the film, there was a spirit of team collaboration, something very positive that made our work fun. I don’t know why, but we all knew we were making a film that was going to be important.Vicente Aranda, 2006 Declaración de Intenciones
The intense and tragic climax was benefited by the weather, with a snowstorm that was not scheduled at all for the shooting, as producer Costa explained through the DVD commentaries. That scene, filmed in front of the famous Burgos Cathedral, was articulated around two popular Spanish Christmas carols, Dime, Niño, de Quién Eres and La Marimorena, whose traditional cheerful melody, by contrast, is changed for the score into one that is elegiac and sad. The score was composed by Jose Nieto, often working with Aranda (Intruso, Celos, Juana la Loca and Carmen) and the film editor was Aranda’s regular, his wife Teresa Font. Equally noteworthy is the film’s striking cinematography by José Luis Alcaine, with whom Aranda had previously worked on no fewer than five films. Alcaine is especially adept at evoking the 'sooty' look of Madrid winters, which convey the somber qualities of urban life during the early years of Francoist Spain.Marvin D’Lugo, Guide to the Cinema of Spain, Greenwood Press, 1997, p.32
Cast
Victoria Abril, here in her ninth collaboration with Vicente Aranda, was thought of from the beginning for the role of Trini, the virginal maid, while Concha Velasco was offered the role of Luisa. When Velasco declined, Aranda deemed Victoria was mature enough to play Luisa and proposed her to switch roles and take that of the widow. She was reluctant, saying that she saw herself more as Trini, the sacrificial maid rather than the wicked widow. Abril was pregnant; by the time she gave birth, she was ready to start the film, had had a change of heart and agreed to be Luisa.Vicente Aranda, 2006 Declaración de Intenciones www.vicentearanda.es.
The role of Trini fell on Maribel Verdú, a young actress who had made her film debut with Aranda in Captain Sánchez's Crime in 1984, as the younger sister of Victoria Abril's character, and who was the leading actress of that film. Maribel Verdú, whose artistic culmination maybe is Ricardo Franco's La Buena Estrella (1997), is better known internationally for her roles in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también (2000) and in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006).
At first, Aranda thought about Antonio Banderas as Paco, but the actor had already undertaken work on Arne Glimcher's The Mambo Kings (1992), and the role was assigned to Jorge Sanz, who would later become best known to English-speaking audiences playing the role of the young soldier who falls in love with four sisters in Belle Époque (1993), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Sanz had won a Goya Award as Best Actor for Aranda's Si Te Dicen que Caí, which also starred Abril. The three lead actors of Amantes had acted together before in another love triangle, in Aranda's previous project, Los Jinetes del Alba.
Victoria Abril - Luisa Jorge Sanz - Paco Maribel Verdú - Trini Enrique Cerro - commandant Mabel Escaño - commandant's wife Alicia Agut -Trini's mother Jose Cerro - Minuta Gabriel Latorre - Gordo Saturnino Garcia - Pueblerino
Themes