Customer Reviews

The Dog in the Manger

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This is a fantastic play written by Lope de Vega during el Siglo de Oro (the golden century)and has been recreated in this most excellent video. The costumes are beautiful, the scenes are fantastic and everything is very very well done. This is a classic Spanish Comedy full of beautiful poetry and flowing Spanish sonnets. A must see for all students of Spanish Theater, Spanish Culture, Spanish Literature or the Spanish Language.

I saw this Spanish film in Mar del Plata Film Festival in 1996, where it won the top prize. As an anecdote, Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein (who was on the jury in that festival) sat right next in front of me at the theater. Based on a play by Lope de Vega, written in 1615, during the golden age of Spanish literature, the film never rises above filmed theater, but it is very well done. I think if you don't speak Spanish, though, you will lost a lot in the translation, a lot of the word games the play is based on. Emma Suarez (a fine Spanish actress) is the leading female; this was one of the last films of director Pilar Miro. Unfortunately, the movie hasn't been seen a lot since then. Many films (including good films, like this one, that won the first prize in a film festival) get forgotten with time. When you see an art movie today, most of the people in the audience are old people, you see very few young people watching this sort of movies; I suppose they are playing computer games in their homes instead. This makes me wonder about the future of cinema as an art.