Alfredo Luchetti Movies
- 1989
This confusing and meandering mystery concerns a double crime committed in a rural village in 1956. Greedy land speculators, soldiers on leave, a house of prostitution, and a smuggler with a mentally challenged daughter are the focus of this crime drama that lacks suspense and suffers from being to disconnected. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paco Rabal, Jose Maria Mazo, (more)
- 1989
This uneven historical drama tries but fails to give any insight into the cultural differences between Arabs and Christians in 12th-century Spain. The harem is unattractive and is erratic, not erotic. The feature is further plagued by poor production and lack of a coherent storyline. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ramon Madaula, Laura del Sol, (more)
- 1988
Laura (Angela Molina) is caught in a love triangle with her husband Tomas (Juan Diego) and his half-brother Adrian (Sergi Mateu) in this routine melodrama. When Tomas ignores her, Laura finds love in the arms of a local textile manufacturer, only to discover later that the man is her husband's half-brother. Tomas learns of the infidelity and seeks vengeance against Laura and Adrian. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ángela Molina, Juan Diego, (more)
- 1987
The generals in this comedy probably got their positions the old-fashioned way: through having good connections (and/or lots of family money) and sufficient seniority. What is certain is that they have no affinity for the study of modern warfare, which is what they have been sent to do here. They have grown so used to maintaining themselves as superior beings that it comes as quite a shock to them when a mere lieutenant is allowed to show them just how ignorant they are. Some of them even start to understand that in an era of missile-delivered nuclear warheads, it's not very safe to be quite so out of touch. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fernando Rey, Héctor Alterio, (more)
- 1987
In this melodrama, set on the Mediterranean isle of Mallorca, 23-year-old Teresa is forced by her family to marry a 50-year-old man. He refuses to have sex with her, opting for artificial insemination by giving her a thimble full of fluid. She repeatedly dumps it down the drain as the fretful husband hopes for an heir. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Silvia Tortosa, Hermann Bonnin, (more)
- 1987
Ona (Ovidi Montllor) is a young woman who has a love affair with the guitar player Manolo in this romantic drama. Despite having a ticket on a departing steamer, he elects to stay in Barcelona with the woman he loves. The two share a memorable day with each other and pledge their mutual love in contrast to their friends who casually engage in sex and use drugs. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alfredo Luchetti, Ovidi Montllor, (more)
- 1983
The subjects broached by this fast-paced film with lurid, emotive, or just plain tabloid-level events involve both drugs and the actions of the Civil Guard, or Spanish national police. Two young men have been trapped into selling drugs to support their cocaine habit, the father of one is a Civil Guard and the father of other, a Basque separatist. Even though the young addicts successfully go cold turkey, the prostitute they live with gets them back into the habit again and this time, the results are much more serious. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jose Manuel Cervino
- 1983
Catalan director Antoni Ribas spent three years creating an epic in three parts, about three days in June, 1917 - a triple play that is successful in this first segment, handling the many factions active and bubbling over in Spain in 1917. The monarchy of Alfonso XIII was weakening so rapidly that he would leave the country permanently in 1931, Catalan nationalists were demanding independence for Catalonia, labor initiatives were in sympathy with the principles that stoked the Russian revolution, anarchists were shouting to be heard, and the military was not exactly a united front. The two leads in this story of an unstable nation in turmoil are a dedicated labor leader and a reserved army lieutenant. Action on all social levels - from the opera to the ghetto - keeps the drama moving at an interesting and fast pace. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helmut Berger
- 1983
This sequel to Valentina jumps ahead eight years where the gentle-poet Pepe is studying in a university and doing an internship in a pharmacy lab. Though it has nearly been a decade, he is still in love with the beautiful Valentina. Unfortunately, things in Spain are getting more tense as his countrymen prepare to rebel against the oppressive government. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miguel Molina, Christina Marsillach, (more)
- 1982
- PG
A soldier in a French prison camp circa spins the yarns of his youth to entertain his follow inmates in this drama from Spanish director Antonio Jose Betancor. As the defeated Spanish Republican army soldiers ponder their circumstances while serving time behind enemy lines, the stories of Jose Garces' (Antonio Canal) childhood, and his love for Valentina (Paloma Gomez), a neighbor girl in his small northeastern Spain community, transport the downbeat soldiers to a happier time. A raucious little rascal who never failed to get into trouble, the smitten youngster beams his declarations of love from the rooftops via semaphore while simultaniously developing a taste for poetry. Despite the trouble he may have caused by killing her father's breeding pigeons, Jose learns what it takes to become a respectable man when his kindly priest and tutor tell him the tales of history's most valiant men. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Quinn, Jorge Sanz, (more)
- 1982
Colometa (Silvia Munt) is an average housewife with two children to care for in the late 1930's, as the Spanish Civil War is starting and her husband goes off to fight. She had been an ordinary woman working in a shop when she met the lively carpenter who married her, and their life together was without major problems. But now she is forced to raise her children under straitened circumstances, and after her husband dies, her life undergoes another major change as she marries for the second time. Underneath Colometa's acquiescent, forebearing exterior must lie just a few discontents, a few unrealized dreams - but they never surface as she blithely moves from one episode in her life to another. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Silvia Munt
- 1981
As cryptic as the title itself, Cripta is about an inmate in a mental hospital who is released to help solve the mystery of a girl who has been missing for six years. After many forays into the darker side of Barcelona, he accomplishes his task and then goes back to the mental hospital. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José M. Sacristán, Rafaela Aparicio, (more)
- 1981
In this children's film about the values of fighting air pollution, a young singing group (Regaliz) is joined by other pre-teens to discover why all the birds have deserted Barcelona -- and what will bring them back again? When it appears that the culprit is the city's smog-filled air, the youngsters decide to take matters into their own hands. Their civic calling is subsequently lightened by snappy dialogue and a few musical numbers. The children organize protests, they convince the mayor to help out, they struggle with their parents, and even set up tree houses in a public park as their new residences. Their activities come to a climax when one of them is injured falling out of a tree house, and the boy's father -- an industrial mogul -- starts taking the problem of air pollution to heart. Maybe there is some hope for the return of the birds after all. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Assumpta Serna
- 1979
The last president of Catalonia, Lluis Companys i Jover, escaped to France after the Spanish Civil War, but was returned to Spain by the Vichy (collaborationist) government in 1940. He was later tried and executed, presumably for treason. This Catalan and Spanish-language movie follows his story from the fall of Barcelona to Franco's troops, to the time of Companys' capture and imprisonment. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1979
40 Years Without Sex, this non-narrative, skit-based satirical film's title in English, refers to the rather extreme moralism of the Franco era (1939-1976) in Spain during which, at least as far as public notice of it went, there was "no sex." In one episode, boys masturbate under the sheets while away at camp. In another, a woman is raped by a German sheep dog. In yet another, a particularly outspoken Falangist has a son who is unmistakably homosexual. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carlos Lucena
- 1976
- R
Themes long forbidden in Spain under the Franco dictatorship began to be explored in the years just following his demise. In this 1976 film, an unhappy and very effeminate man (played by a woman, Victoria Abril), experiences one difficulty after another. As a boy in Cataluña, his father attempts to teach him to "be a man." These lessons include taking him to a big-city whorehouse to have sex. At the bordello, he successfully avoids having sex with a woman, but when he sees a transvestite revue which culminates in the actors revealing their actual genitalia, he is fascinated. He runs away from home, learns to be a hairdresser, and develops a transvestite act of his own. After numerous love affairs with men, he eventually realizes his transsexual nature and goes to another country to have a sex-change operation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
