José Luis Garcia Sanchez Movies

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Spanish author Manuel Vincent, this drama chronicles the coming-of-age of a young man who grew up in Spain during the late '50s, the time when Franco's regime was dominating the country. The film opens in 1957 as Manuel returns from boarding school to his home village in Valencia. While trying to readjust to village life and his old friends and family, Manuel joins the ranks among those who follows El Bola, a cigar-chomping, portly, boisterous fellow with an official demeanor that has everyone around him fooled into thinking him a man with high-ranking connections. El Bola decides it is time for Manuel to lose his virginity and so tries to convince the youth to visit the town brothel, but Manuel is not interested. His heart has been captured by a pretty young girl to whom he has never spoken. Back at home, his father disdains Manuel's dream of becoming a writer and makes him choose between the priesthood and becoming a lawyer. Manuel chooses the latter and so goes off to school in Valencia. No sooner does he arrive than he sees the pretty girl and follows her to Malvarrosa Beach where he encounters a wedding party as they are being thrown out of a cafe by one of Franco's generals who wants the place for his own debauched revelry. In school, Manuel meets a professor with subversive ideas who provides him with a number of banned books. So it goes for Manuel with each subsequent anecdote commenting slyly upon the effects of fascism on the Spanish people ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A fifteen-year old boy schemes to get out of his family vacation so that he may set about seducing his married, thirty-five-year old physical therapist neighbor in this inter-generational coming of age sex comedy starring Antonio Horelando and Maria Barranco. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A middle-aged woman comes into her own in this Spanish comedy. Carmen liked to have affairs. After one typically hot night playing poker and messing around with her male friends, she returns home in the morning to face her husband's jealous rage which causes him to die of a massive coronary. This leaves the newly widowed Carmen in a transitional state. On one hand, she misses her husband and her former life, on the other, she is now seen as available by her boss and co-workers at the newspaper she works at. When her daughter, Marta, a ballet student in Paris, announces her pregnancy, Carmens' life becomes even more complex. After coping with sexual harassment and several lousy dates, Carmen finds her dreamboat, a dashing businessman who appreciates her for herself. She also comes to look forward to becoming a grandmother. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

It is an interesting fact that Generalissimo Francisco Franco did not relinquish even a tiny bit of his hold on the reins of power in Spain until he had quelled all that country's many separatist and terrorist groups to his satisfaction. It is also quite remarkable that, having done so, he readily passed the reins of government over to parliament and the king. Even so, his heavy-handed tactics in getting there, beginning with the Civil War itself, aroused tremendous criticism and worldwide concern. The 1975 trial, which took place in Burgos, of five men accused of terrorism was a part of that process. It was a worldwide cause celèbre at the time, and this movie loosely uses that story as its basis. However, not only does it not go into the rationales and defense for the activities of the men who were convicted of terrorism (and executed), but it even scants the prosecution's case. Politically knowledgeable reviewers were disappointed in the film, which serves better as a courtroom melodrama than as a recapitulation of history. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This wacky comedy depicts a single day in and around the set of a movie on the Spanish Civil War being filmed in a working class Madrid neighborhood. Paloma, (Ana Belen), a bored housewife with a husband who is too concerned about being exploited by "the ruling classes" to work, must evade the romantic advances of an unattractive fishmonger, and cope with the attentions the male lover of a homosexual fascist is showering on her daughter. Meanwhile, she engages in a tryst with the equally bored fading film star Luis Doncel (Juan Luis Gallardo). Everyone on the set is waiting for the director to show up, but he's too heavily involved in a domestic dispute to work. Meanwhile, a series of strikes has brought Madrid to a virtual standstill. Director/co-writer Jose Luis Garcia Sanchez manages to satirize virtually every aspect of contemporary Spanish society, as well as relationships between the sexes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this romantic farce, Macarena is a pretty French girl who has come to Cordoba in southern Spain in search of a man she believes may be her father. She finally tracks him and his clan down in a minor city museum: they have become squatters there during one of the museum curator's brief absences. Two policemen have been given the job of persuading the wacky family to vacate the premises. Their response to these blandishments is to threaten to destroy the museum's treasures. At the same time her maybe-father's two sons are putting the make on her, one of the policemen has taken up residence with the family and is dancing with them, as a police SWAT team prepares to storm the building. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A German television director is sent to Spain to cover the 50th anniversary of the Spanish Civil war in this plodding drama. He spends most of his time passing time that has nothing to do with his assigned project. Documentary footage of the war is shown and no new insights are given during the director's half-hearted research of a historical event about which he knows next to nothing. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This literary film is imbued with the disenchantment of Spanish exiles who left their homes to protest Franco's fascist regime and then returned after its demise to find that democracy had not instilled either ethics or deep motivation in government leaders. Director Basilio Martin Patino presents his story, and a large part of the film is based on his own life, through the experiences of an exiled heroine played by Charo Lopez. She has returned to Spain to look for meaning in her life, something that she never found living in Germany, not even after having a child. She is also in the process of translating the German lyric poet Friederich Holderlin (see the 1985 Halfte Des Lebens) into Spanish, focusing on his epic Hyperion. Excerpts from the translation are voiced over throughout the film. As she looks up old friends from many, many years ago, even those who have achieved worldly success are suffering from the same ennui that propelled her back home. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, an unmarried couple who imagine themselves to be politically very radical, vex their respective genuinely conservative parents by refusing to marry. They are happy enough to receive financial support, though, and after a baby is born to them, they begin to rethink their supposed radical principles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide