Rafaela Aparicio Movies
Spanish supporting and character actress Rafaela Aparicio worked with some of her country's best directors on over 100 films. She was born Rafaela Díaz Valiente, the daughter of a merchant ship's pilot in Marbella, Spain. Before making her stage debut at age 23, Aparicio had worked as a teacher. Short of stature, round-bodied, and possessing a screechy voice, she was typically cast as a bright and happy spinster or a mother-in-law. Though she did well enough in such roles, some directors noted in Aparicio a certain eccentricity that made her ideal for art house films, in which her characters were often symbols or political metaphors. This latter aspect can be most strongly seen in Carlos Saura's Ana y los Lobos (Ana and the Wolves [1972]) and Mama Cumple Cien Años (Mum's a Hundred Years Old [1979]), wherein her portrayals of slightly crazed matriarchs represents Franco's takeover of Spain. Aparicio's two most famous films are Victor Erice's El Sur (The South [1983]) and Fernan Gomez's La Vida por Delante (Life Ahead [1958]). In 1989, Aparicio received a Goya Prize for her performance in El Mar y el Tiempo. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 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
After the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Spain was governed by the moralistic and occasionally heavy-handed Falangist regime of General Francisco Franco. However, as time passed, the government's strict restrictions on public behavior, divorce and so on were eased. Compared to the 1940s in Spain, 1968 was a period of almost licentious ease. Even though very little of the generational turmoil that seethed throughout the developed world at the time reached Spain, enough did to be noticeable. This story tells what happens when a relatively "liberal" man who chose voluntary exile after the war returns to visit his family and friends during this period. Jesus (Jose Soriano) is distressed to find the values he cherished seemingly part of the past, as he reunites with his family. He visits his brother's divorced wife and watches her become senseless with drink, and hears curse words freely used at a bar during a card game. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fernando Fernán Gómez, Rafaela Aparicio, (more)
- 1986
Eschewing a realistic depiction of Franco's Spain in the 1940s, director Fernando Trueba uses a touch of sarcastic humor in painting a 16-year-old's brief stay in a TB sanatorium. Manolo (Jorge Sanz) is one of two brothers who ends up in a tuberculosis sanatorium that is specifically designed for somewhat younger children. Manolo's problem is that he is experiencing the first stirrings of sexual desire and cannot look upon the female nurses and staff with the innocent eyes of the other children. His first overtures to one of the nurses meets with rejection; in fact, the nurse leaves the sanatorium. Manolo really asks for trouble when he falls for another pretty nurse and she herself becomes attracted to him. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdú, (more)
- 1986
In this engaging comedy, Ana (Veronica Forque) is the wife of Antonio (Antonio Resines), the assistant to the minister of health. When Antonio sets up a clinic to combat sexually transmitted diseases, Ana and her friend cruise the gay bars and the red-light district for potential customers. Soon Antonio is called before his irate boss, who tempers his indignation when he, his wife, and his mistress becomes clients. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Verónica Forqué, Antonio Resines, (more)
- 1986
- R
Antonio (Jose M. Sacristan) is a vagabond traveler who hitches a ride into a small town. He takes a job in a restaurant before landing a better job in the local movie theater. Antonio remembers the owner as the woman who employed his acting troupe years before when he was a young child. He later gets mixed up in a plot to steal a valuable painting from a convent. The English title of Cara de Acelga is Spinach Face. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José M. Sacristán, Fernando Fernán Gómez, (more)
- 1984
Fernando Rey plays a Spanish cardinal who returns to his home town thirty years after leaving for Rome. Rey knew that he'd left an illegitimate daughter behind, but was unaware that he also has a granddaughter (Victoria Abril). The girl is embroiled in an affair with Rey's own brother (Francisco Rabal), a Marxist activist. The filmmakers' sympathies are more with Marxism than Catholicism, but politics are secondary to the kinky romantic intrigues. Evidently Fernando Rey didn't consider Our Father (original Spanish title: Padre Nuestro) significant enough to list on his official, published resume. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, (more)
- 1983
El Sur (The South) is the story of Estrella (Iciar Bollain), a little girl from Southern Spain who has been uprooted to the North. Estrella maintains a sentimentalized attachment to the region of her birth, an attachment manifested in her love for her father (Omero Antonutti). The girl's rose-colored memories are shattered when she learns that her beloved dad once carried on affair with a Southern woman-and that the flames of passion still smolder within him. This Spanish/Argentinian coproduction was filmed on location in Madrid, Navarre, Vittoria, and Zamora. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Omero Antonutti, Sonsoles Aranguren, (more)
- 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)
- 1979
- R
For the Spanish Mama Turns a Hundred, director Carlos Saura reassembles many of his cast members from his 1972 Anna and the Wolves. As Mama reaches the century mark, her wolf-pack relatives go fang and claw after currying her favor in hopes of a large legacy. The film is set during the Franco regime, permitting Saura to use his greedy family as a microcosm of all that had gone bad in Spain since the Civil War. Though potentially grim, Mama Turns a Hundred is essentially a comedy, though many of the laughs are of the "shock of recognition" variety, especially for those who've come from a similarly avaricious family. The film was originally released as Mama Cumple Cien Anos. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Geraldine Chaplin, Amparo Muñoz, (more)
- 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
- 1976
Set during the time of the Spanish Civil War, this drama explores the efforts of the ancient mother of an elderly man to win an inheritance which can only be theirs if the mentally damaged woman she has persuaded her son to marry has children. When the old man cannot consummate the marriage with sufficient vigor to ensure offspring, the desperate old lady begins loaning the girl out for liaisons with other men in town, in particular the town's mayor. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Esperanza Roy, Antonio Ferrandis, (more)
- 1974
With a fairly repugnant basic premise, this Spanish comedy rollicks along to its melodramatic conclusion. In the story, a man who is married to an irritating and over-excited woman, decides that rather than either divorcing her or, possibly, killing her, he will simply feed her enough tranquilizers to keep her out of action most of the time. His reasons for this course of action are shown on the rare occasions when his wife is awake. The beleaguered husband seeks comfort in the arms of a nearby widow, and attempts to deal with his rich mother-in-law's wild "what the heck, I'm going to die soon anyway" hedonistic abandon. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rafaela Aparicio
- 1972
This Spanish drama verges on parody as it explores the convoluted, repressed personalities of a family dominated by a powerful mother. The mother's frustrations have warped the men. The three men's foibles are revealed during the visit of a young English woman. Director Saura has used intensified, heightened symbolism to tell this story in the somewhat surreal manner of his better-known film Garden of Delights. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
