Throughout his career, Luis Bunuel was attracted to themes exhibiting the dark side of human nature. So it was no surprise in 1954 when he decided to film Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS, for it contained all the violent energy he needed to achieve cinematic fission.
Using the of Bronte's Gothic novel, Bunuel substitutes a Mexican setting for the English one. He also alters the plot to heighten tension and maximize the effect of imagery. As the film unfolds, Bunuel accentuates the destructive forces at work in the characters: the rancor, the vengeance, and the cruelty that rise up from the Cimmerian depths of the soul to wound and rend. In following this theme, Bunuel turns the love-hate relationship between Alejandro (Jorge Mistral) and Catalina (Irasema Dilian) into an open sore upon which each character heaps salt in a celebration of sadism. What bonds the two is what Bunuel calls l'amour fou, a fateful force that unites lovers, but, paradoxically, makes it impossible for them to co-exist. In Abismos de Pasion, it is as if Alejandro and Catalina enjoy hating as much as loving, perhaps more so. And the hate spreads. Catalina, for example, is a she-devil who viciously taunts and ridicules Isabel. The action takes place against a surreal backdrop of scrubby landscapes with leafless trees and gnarled roots symbolizing the perversity of the twisted attachment between Alejandro and Catalina. The images are reminiscent of a Salvador Dali painting. Abismos suffers somewhat by the performances of the actors. They are adequate, but that's all. In keeping with the feel and look of the film, they wear little - if any - makeup. Modern filmgoers used to romantic, sentimentalized versions of WUTHERING HEIGHTS will no doubt be taken aback by the starkness of Buñuel's film. Still, ABISMOS DE PASION is worth a look for the audacity and daring of its director in creating a nightmarish vision of love gone wrong.
