Amparo Soler Leal Movies
- 1999
Veteran Spanish director Luis Garcia Berlanga created this anarchic black comedy about sexual impotence and millennial anxiety. Though a Paris-based plastic surgeon spends much of his time and wealth on prostitutes, he is plagued by impotence. Despondent, he plans to commit suicide. After happening upon a bike with "Paris-Timbuktu" painted on it, he decides to bike from France to Africa and kill himself there on New Year's Eve. But when his plans are thwarted in Spain by a painful boil on his bottom, he is forced to room with a pair of sisters in a remote village. Through them, he finds himself increasingly immersed in the local community, populated by the likes of a clergyman suspected of murder, a nudist garage mechanic, and a bizarre champion cyclist. Paris-Timbuktu was screened at the 1999 Montreal Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Concha Velasco, (more)
- 1980
A Marquis (Luis Escobar) suddenly becomes inspired to reclaim his palace, now gone to seed, right in the heart of Madrid. He and his son head for the city, without taking into account that his wife, the aged Marquesa is thoroughly ensconsed in the palace, has been for more than 40 years, and has no intention of leaving. In order to settle the issue, the Marquis decides to get his wife committed - not an unreasonable proposition given the fact that she has preferred to stay in bed all these years. Variously eccentric characters pop in and out of the palace as the Marquis tries to implement his plan, without much success. The Marquesa, in turn, manages to force him and her former lover into a duel in the garden and pulls out a shotgun to put them out of their misery and her life. Things backfire, so to speak, and the Spanish State comes into the picture, perhaps it will have more success where its old - very old - aristocracy has failed to measure up. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luis Escobar, José Luis Lopez Vasquez, (more)
- 1976
This film follows the experiences of a Spanish family living near the Portuguese border at the time of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in February of 1936. The story also reveals the long-standing romantic rivalry between the father and the son of the family, as well as their mutual caring and esteem. Besides the tension within the family, the movie also shows the general tension just before the war in the episodes that take place in a local cabaret. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Antonio Ferrandis, Amparo Soler Leal, (more)
- 1978
At age 40, the married woman in this film has her first adulterous affair and decides suddenly that marriage is not for her. Impulsively leaving home with her daughter for a resort on the beach, she hangs out with her girlfriends and essays a few romances until she receives a legal summons from her husband's attorney. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Amparo Soler Leal
- 1984
- Add What Have I Done to Deserve This? to QueueAdd What Have I Done to Deserve This? to top of Queue
Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, the Luis Buñuel of the 1980s, cooks up another perversely funny descent into urban hell in What Have I Done to Deserve This? Carmen Maura plays a middle-class housewife hemmed in by her wildly eccentric relatives. Her principal purpose in life is a balancing act: to keep her head fastened on securely while all others are losing theirs. Film buffs will have a field day toting up Almodóvar's visual and verbal allusions to the works of Buñuel, Brian De Palma, Billy Wilder, John Waters, and even Andy Warhol. What Have I Done to Deserve This? was originally titled ¿Que He Hecho Yo Para Merecer Esto? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carmen Maura, Ángel de Andrés Lopez, (more)
