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Tristana
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It is often said that the defining characteristic of classicists
from John Ford to Clint Eastwood is the invisibility of their style. But even
their films look ostentatious and contrived next to the late work of Luis Buñuel.
What makes Tristana so disquieting
is the seeming simplicity of its manner and the sense of it unfolding, with
rigorous and brutal logic, an inevitable tragedy.
Buñuel had nursed this adaptation of Benito Pérez Galdós’ classic
novel since 1963. It tackles one of his favourite topics: the seduction and
corruption of an innocent, Tristana (Catherine Deneuve), by the much older Don
Lope (Fernando Rey), a gentleman whose stated
political ideals are far more radical than his treatment of women.
Tristana survives this oppression, after the loss of one leg, by
doubling its viciousness and spreading its effects – as in the disturbing where
she exhibits her body to the young servant, Saturno (Jesús Fernández).
Is it a surrealist film? Not obviously, but profoundly: a
subterranean world of unconscious drives, a parallel dimension, seems to lurk
just beneath the surface of everything Buñuel presents – peeking out only in
the final glimpse of how this sad story that could have headed in another
direction altogether.
MORE Buñuel: Un Chien andalou, Belle de jour, The Diary of a Chambermaid, Abismos de pasión © Adrian Martin April 2003 |
