AY, CARMELA!
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
AY, CARMELA! is a film by Carlos Saura and stars Spain's first international box-office star Carmen Maura. Maura was last seen in Pedro Almodovar's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, which was my choice for the best film of 1989 (the year I saw it--it was released in Spain 1987, I think).
AY,CARMELA is set in Spain in 1938 during the Civil War, that bloody dress rehearsal for World War II. Carmela and Paulino, the Tip-Top Variety, have been entertaining front-line Republican troops. Carmela convinces Paulino to bug out for the safety of Valencia only to land them in the clutches of the Falangist and Italian forces. They are recruited from a possible firing squad to do a show for the Fascist officers and for a group of Polish volunteers captured from the International Brigade and condemned to die in the morning. Normally I don't mention much if anything about plots in my reviews, but I know that many of you will not get a chance to see this movie unless you find it on video next year and I want you to see it. This is a wonderfully resonant movie with a wonderful performance by Carmen Maura (who can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned).
The theme of this movie is the corruption of the artist by totalitarianism and by extension the corruption of us all by forces beyond our control. Do we cooperate with evil or do we resist even if it is hopeless? Carmela resists, Paulino cooperates. The results of these choices both uplift and terribly sadden us. I was crying as I exited the auditorium. Fair warning. The film scholar might like to compare AY, CARMELA! with Istvan Szabo's MEPHISTO (1981). They are the low and the high roads that lead to the same destination.
For me it is enough merely to kick back and let Maura do her thing. She is the nurturing mother, with her long, wise, Castillian face, impossible, impractical in the face of evil, an unintentionally campy vaudevillean, the heroine, the buffoon. Maura captures this silly, brave, ignoble, noble woman fully and perfectly; she hates being a heroine, but she hates being a dupe even more.
Backing Maura up is a fine actor Andres Pajares as Paulino. Paulino is a man, vain, pliable, a survivor first, full of himself. Pajares creates a slippery coward and we can see why Carmela loves him even though she sees him as honestly as she sees everything else around her. And the two of them on stage leave no doubt as to why vaudeville died.
I also enjoyed the performance of Maurizio di Razza as the preening Italian lieutenant who is the director/producer of the Fascists' show; he especially delights us and illuminates the film when he leads a military chorus of an amazingly racist song about turning the Ethiopians (then under the Italians' colonial heel) into good Italians; I haven't seen anything like it since the "Springtime for Hitler" sequence in Mel Brooks' THE PRODUCERS, except I presume that this song is historically true.
And then there is Gabino Diego as the shell-shocked mute who attaches himself to the Tip-Top Variety after they find him naked on th road and starving. Diego's performance draws into its unfunny comedy the entire horror of Guernica and all wars.
(The script is by Rafael Azcona. AY, CARMELA! won 13 Goya Prizes (the Spanish Oscar), including film, director, actress, actor, supporting actor, adapted screenplay. Saura was the director of CRIA, CARMEN, and BLOOD WEDDING.)
Viewing this film on the heels of the cease fire in the Persian Gulf has strange and powerful resonances for me and a kind of special relevance. But its story and its message would be powerful and relevant in any circumstance. I completely and enthusiastically recommend AY, CARMELA! to you.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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