GOYA IN BORDEAUX Reviewed on March 28th, 2001 By Jerry Saravia
Famed Spanish painter Francisco Goya created paintings of carcasses of pigs, sheep and other animals using dark, vibrant colors (he also painted visions of death using people as well). His life must have been fascinating but you wouldn't know it from watching Carlos Saura's "Goya in Bordeaux," which reveals so little of the man and his art that it may as well be about good old King Henry VIII, if not for the time period and costuming.
The old Goya is played by Francisco Rabal, shown living in exile in France with his caring wife and his mature teenage daughter, Rosario (Daphne Fernandez). Goya reminisces about his past to Rosario, though she has heard these stories countless times before. He speaks of an affair he had with the dangerous Cayetano, Duchess of Alba (Maribel Verdu), who later opposed and was thus poisoned by the Queen Maria Luisa. There are also glimpses into his days as a court painter, his portraits of people he found both significant and otherwise, his increasing deafness, his admiration of Velazquez's "Las Meninas" and the visions of death he had that so haunted him till the end of his life. The younger, middle-aged Goya as shown in these flashbacks is played by Jose Coronado, and he is so charismatic and romantic that one wishes Saura spent more time exploring this actor. Alas, he does not.
"Goya in Bordeaux" is stunningly shot by one of our great cinematographers, Vittorio Storaro (who helmed Saura's previous "Tango," as well as some early Bertolucci), and it is beautifully crafted with various lighting color schemes and silhouettes, as if we were watching a painting unfold before our eyes. Unfortunately, there is barely much illumination into Goya's life and so we get the feeling that we are watching a series of still lifes that shed scarce insight into the man. We mostly see the older Goya fretting and arguing and feeling disoriented by his paintings but that is as far as one gets into his soul. As it is, this film may as well be about any sick old man living in exile.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml
E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at Faust667@aol.com or at faustus_08520@yahoo.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews