When Fernando Rey falls ill, his estranged daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, goes to stay with him. It's more an excuse to get away from her failing marriage to Norman Briski.
Idiosyncrasies in the story-telling convince me this is a meditation on how no two sets of memory, no two tellings of the same event, agree. It begins with Rey narrating Miss Chaplin's musings on the events. Rey explains that he fills his days with his work, teaching, and then writing. Often he burns his writing when he finds it unsatisfactory, and starts again. Later, we see Briski and Miss Chaplin discussing their life together, disagreeing about what has happened. Hasn't this happened to all of us?
There seems no hint of the political satire that so many of Carlos Saura's movies have claimed for them. This seems a more personal film, in which the implication is that just as Rey's marriage failed, so too, and for many of the same reasons, will his daughter's. Yet looking at something and finding its reasons, are not justifications. Perhaps all relationships are doomed to failure; they inevitably end, even if it only with death. Does that justify the failure?
Idiosyncrasies in the story-telling convince me this is a meditation on how no two sets of memory, no two tellings of the same event, agree. It begins with Rey narrating Miss Chaplin's musings on the events. Rey explains that he fills his days with his work, teaching, and then writing. Often he burns his writing when he finds it unsatisfactory, and starts again. Later, we see Briski and Miss Chaplin discussing their life together, disagreeing about what has happened. Hasn't this happened to all of us?
There seems no hint of the political satire that so many of Carlos Saura's movies have claimed for them. This seems a more personal film, in which the implication is that just as Rey's marriage failed, so too, and for many of the same reasons, will his daughter's. Yet looking at something and finding its reasons, are not justifications. Perhaps all relationships are doomed to failure; they inevitably end, even if it only with death. Does that justify the failure?