SCREENS
Hot and Cold
Two new series tap extreme climes from Buñuel in Mexico
to Iceland’s endless winter
THAT OBSCURE STRETCH OF A
MASTER’S FILMOGRAPHY
Luis Buñuel en México
BY M A R J O R I E B AU M G A R T E N
Although Buñuel gained attention and
Few would deny Spanish-born filmmaker
Luis Buñuel his place in the pantheon of the notoriety with his first two films, “Un Chien
great directors. From his first film in 1929, “Un Andalou” and L’Age d’Or, which were made
Chien Andalou,” on which he collaborated in France, it proved difficult for him to follow
with the surrealist groundbreaker Salvador up those two artistic affronts to the church and
Dalí to make a film with potent imagery that bourgeoisie with equally independent and daring work. Throughout
still has the power to
Nov. 22: Mexican Bus Ride (Subida al cielo)
the Thirties in France
shock viewers nearly
Nov. 29: Daughter of Deceit (La hija del engaño)
and Spain, Buñuel
80 years later, to his
Dec. 6: The Great Madcap (El grán calavera)
directed the Spanishgreat latter period durDec. 13: Illusion Travels by Streetcar
language dubbing
ing which such films
(La ilusión viaja en tranvía)
of many Hollywood
as Belle de Jour, The
Dec. 20: Nazarín
films, but he left for
Discreet Charm of the
the United States durBourgeoisie, and That
Obscure Object of Desire received multiple inter- ing the Spanish Civil War. In 1946, he moved
national film awards, Buñuel and his films have to Mexico, became a citizen, and lived there the
been popular staples for repertory showcases rest of his life, despite making movies abroad in
and film scholars. Yet frequently overlooked the Sixties and Seventies.
Buñuel’s Mexican period is often dismissed
or discounted is Buñuel’s Mexican period, an
interval that stretched from 1946 to 1961, dur- because his films from the era are studio genre
products with minimal budgets and southing which the director made some 20 films.
Illusion Travels by Streetcar
of-the-border stars, which could make them
seem even more disposable than Hollywood
B-movies. Some of this mistaken impression
is, no doubt, also due to the American sense of
superiority in all things culture-related. A new
five-film series, Luis Buñuel en México, presented by Cine las Americas and the Consulate
General of Mexico in Austin, offers a taste of
the range of Buñuel’s film work in Mexico and
handily dispels the notion that these films are
of only incidental importance. Through studio
projects, Buñuel, like many of Hollywood’s
most admired directors, was able to use conventional and prosaic story structures as
anchors while simultaneously subverting their
modalities and implied meanings. In most of
these Mexican films, Buñuel’s strong moral and
political concerns can be discerned through the
comic plots and melodramatic turns.
The Great Madcap (1949) was the second
film Buñuel made in Mexico (the first was the
musical Gran Casino). Almost a classic screwball comedy, The Great Madcap is the story of
a profligate rich man and his money-grubbing
family. Each side tricks the other into believing they have become suddenly impoverished
in order to teach a lesson to the other. Buñuel
turns to drama with Daughter of Deceit (1951),
Jar City
STORMY WEATHER
Fire Beneath the Ice: Films of Iceland
BY K I M B E R LE Y J O N E S
teased out of the five films, it may be in the
characters, who all seek to have command
of their situations – to organize not freedom
exactly, but at least how they order their days.
Is there a Scandinavian essence? Americans No such luck – not with cheating husbands
glean what they can of it in glub-glubs from and pregnant girlfriends, serial killers on the
the pop culture products – the movies and loose, and their own bodies’ inevitable deteriomusic and furniture monoliths – of the Nordic ration making chaos out of their careful plans.
The series is bracketed by quirky comedies,
countries, but if there’s a transnational character, it’s ill-defined. Iceland’s anima may be the with the dourer stuff in between. The hipster
most inscrutable. Even that country’s most anomie of Baltasar Kormákur’s 101 Reykjavík
doesn’t feel as fresh
potent and nameNov. 23: 101 Reykjavík
as it surely did when
checked export, Björk,
Nov. 30: Jar City (Myrin)
it debuted in 2000,
isn’t exactly on the
Dec. 7: Children of Nature (Börn náttúrunnar)
but it still has its
tip of the American
Dec. 14: Cold Light (Kaldaljós)
amusements in the
tongue; after hearDec. 21: The Seagull’s Laughter (Mávahlátur)
form of 30-year-old
ing about the Austin
loser Hlynur (Hilmir
Film Society’s new
Essential Cinema series, Fire Beneath the Ice: Snær Guðnason), who lives with his mother,
Films of Iceland, a colleague asked me if the lives off his unemployment checks, and masturbates to the morning workout shows on
movies all starred “Bork.”
In fact, the elfin chanteuse makes zero television. Hlynur wants only for his life to
appearances in AFS’ swatch of contemporary stay as uncomplicated and undemanding as
Icelandic cinema. (She swore off acting after humanly possible – a plan that goes off the
enduring Dancer in the Dark with Lars von rails when he falls for Mom’s live-in lover,
Trier, a Dane.) If there’s a commonality to be Lola, a flamenco instructor. Lola is played by
“I thought I could organize freedom/
How Scandinavian of me”
– Björk, “Hunter”
46 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E NOVEMBER 19, 2010 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m
former Pedro Almodóvar muse Victoria Abril,
and it’s clever casting; Kormákur’s debut splits
the difference between early Almodóvar’s
hot-blooded sexual hysteria and Iceland’s
glum-faced chill. (Björk extended family alert:
The Sugarcubes’ Einar Örn Benediktsson coscored the film with Blur’s Damon Albarn.)
Guðnason pops up in series capper The
Seagull’s Laughter, too, but men exist here only
to be manipulated (and occasionally mangled)
in this Fifties-set gynecocratic comedy. Freyja
was the Norse goddess of love and death, with
a hand in war and fertility, too, and flamehaired Freyja (Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir) more
than lives up to her namesake. She’s a silky
seducer of both men and women, netting
proposals from the former and blind devotion from the latter. Freyja sends her charges
to surprisingly dark places, but The Seagull’s
Laughter never loses its loose, larky energy.
Alternately, you can almost see the energy
sapping from the geriatric leads in Friðrik þór
Friðriksson’s Children of Nature. The series’
earliest film – it was made in 1991 – and
certainly its slowest, Children of Nature was
the first Icelandic film to be nominated for an
Academy Award. (It lost to Italy’s sex-romp
Mediterraneo.) The elegiac film, which has