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Beyond Desire

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DESEO is a strong story by Ángeles Caso brought to the screen by director Gerardo Vera with a fine cast, a story that attempts to clarify the puzzling factions in Spain of 1945 and only succeeds moderately well in allowing the viewer to understand the political machinations of a tortured Spain at war on civil as well as international grounds. The script is smart and the delivery of the various characters by a talented cast allows some insights into the dilemma that still confuses historians: more important for a film, the dimly lit fractions do supply a fine background for a love story.

In Franco's Spain there are communists, fascists, monarchists, and republicans. We meet a family once well appointed before Franco's overthrow of the monarchy (the father of the family was assassinated by Franco's soldiers): the mute mother (Rosa Maria Sardà) is tended by two daughters - Raquel (María Vázquez) and Elvira (Leonor Watling) whose husband Julio (Ernesto Alterio) is imprisoned for being a communist. Living at near poverty level after a previous life of culture, Elvira finds a job as a maid with Pablo (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a wealthy Argentinean who with his strange 'friend' Alina (Cecilia Roth) maintain undercover ties to Hitler. There is an immediate attraction between the cultured Elvira and Pablo and a love of poetry and intellectual matters soon develops into a physical relationship. Elvira struggles against falling in love as her husband is due to be released from prison, but re-entering the luxury world of her childhood, affording her the ability to make enough money to keep her mother and sister in better conditions, softens her heart and she falls in love with Pablo. Pablo is warned by Alina that their 'mission' to help Nazi officers to escape to Peron's Argentina may be hampered by Elvira's past and her political association with anti-Nazi groups. When Hitler dies and Julio is released from prison, the crises politically and emotionally reach a breaking point and as with all war stories there is no full resolution of the effects on people's lives, lives fractured by the transient factions in a country torn by disparate commitments and betrayed trusts and loves.

Despite the at times confusing progression of the plot, the presence of such superb actors as Cecilia Roth, Rosa Maria Sardà, Leonor Watling, and Leonardo Sbaraglia (complemented by minor roles by Emilio Gutiérrez, Gloria Muñoz, Jordi Bosch and Norma Aleandro) make this an involving drama. The period costuming is excellent and the musical score by Stephen Warbeck ably enhances to tense and erotic atmosphere. While not a great movie, it is certainly worth viewing for both the love story and for some further insights into Spain's political history. Grady Harp, July 07

Beyond DesireThe Spanish Civil War and the aftermath brilliantly shown in the Movie Beyond Desire explores multilayered relationships between individuals and groups involved in the fighting between anti-fascists and anti-communists at the very beginning of the World War 2. The democratically elected government of the Republic consisted of the left-wing parties including socialists, anarchists, Trotskyites and communists was betrayed by their own general Franco the same way as the Chilean Allende's government was betrayed 40 years later by general Pinochet. As we can see from the movie, the family at the center of the plot, namely father was an important member of the republican government, while his elder daughter evidently got married with the father's permission to a communist journalist. When the legitimate Republic was crushed by joined Franco and Hitler forces (remember "Guernica" by Picasso) obviously for the lack of the Republic own unity, the killings and arrests had spread across the Spain as portrayed by many movies including "Pan' Labyrinth". While her father was killed by the Franco's soldiers, and her husband was sitting in Franco's prison, and her younger sister is fighting for the Resistance, the main "heroine" is starting to work for the Argentian-born supporter of the Nazi, who have already lost the outcome of the WW2 and prepared the exit strategy to South America. Make the story short, these two have developed a lust affair that led to a heroine's husband death. While "Operation Rat Line" is underway, the heroine had finally woken up from the lust nightmare and has committed suicide along with bringing the well-deserved justice to her former lover. The bottom-line, as we can see even today, that the fight is going on. As we can notice on the news from Baltic republics and other East European countries, the children and grandchildren of the ex-nazis have taken over and changing the history of the WW2, blaming the heroes of the resistance and others for violence towards their fathers, like those war criminals did not deserve what has come to them. Some descendants of ex-nazis are even being awarded a Nobel Prize, ironically enough.