Analysis
In Amantes, Aranda focuses tightly on his three leading actors, effectively conveying the dreadful, consuming power of passion. The films portrays a mortal struggle between a strong phallic widow and a younger patriarchal woman for the love of a young man in a romantic love triangle. The widow derives her power from an intense sexuality and the religious idealism belongs to the young victim. Set in film noir genre, it depicts the young man, Paco, not as the master of the two women who love him, but as the malleable object of their competing scenarios. Luisa is introduced with a mouthful of candy, and draped with Christmas tinsel, almost as though she were a gift to the sexually frustrated Paco. Aranda thus sets up his central conflict with precision and power. Despite the physical beauty of the two women, it is the handsome young man who is treated as the primary object of desire. He is seduced by both women and is the object of the camera’s erotic gaze. He embodies the 1950s generation torn between “two Spains,” The formulation of the two Spains are represented by the two female rivals. Identified with the images of rural Spain, Trini is the traditionally stoically self-sacrificing embodiment of catholic Spain versus the modern vision of a newly emerging industrialized Spain, incarnated in Luisa who is identified with the city and with the iconography of foreign culture (Kimonos, Christmas tree ornaments), representing the modernizing version of Spain. Though the narrative eventually cast Luisa as the heartless instigator of Trini’s murder, she can also be perceived as a rebel against the oppression of a macho culture while Paco, a traditional tragic film noir hero, is turned into a murderer by the two women who love him.
Despise being positioned as the opposing stereotypes of virgin and whore; Trini and Luisa are equally passionate and strong willed. Both are frequently robed in blue, a color feature in traditional pictorial representations of the virgin, and Trini takes with her a painting of the Immaculate Conception and hangs it in the hotel room just before her death. While Luisa directs her violent passions outwards, confessing to Paco that she murdered her husband, Trini turns them inwards on herself, following in the footsteps of her lame mother who threw herself in front of a cart after learning of her husband ‘s infidelity. Just as Luisa forced Paco to take hold of his penis in their pursuits of pleasure; Trini coerces him to wield the razor that will release her from pain.
The sexual scenes of the film are designed to underscore the female domination of the male; even in terms of his sexual identity. Amantes forcefully depicts the subversive power of Luisa’s sexuality. From the moment she opened the door to Paco, wearing a colorful dark blue robe and draped with glittering streamers she is using to decorate a Christmas tree, Luisa appears as a profane alternative to the Madonna. Her body substitutes for the Christmas tree and all of its religious symbolism, offering eroticism in place of religious ecstasy. Not only she is the sexual subject who actively pursues her own desire and who first seduces Paco, but she continues to control the lovemaking. In a graphic sex scene, we see her penetrating his anus with a silk handkerchief and then withdrawing it in the moments of ecstasy. Despite her sexually dominating her young lover, Luisa remains loving and emotionally vulnerable. Paco response not only makes him obsessed, but he rejects the more traditional passive sexuality of his fiancé Trini.
The murder scene is remarkable for its understated approach. Stage on a bench in front of the cathedral of Burgos (the small town of Aranda del Duero in the film), the murder retains the aura of Christian ritual, especially since the minimalist representation of violence is limited to a few close-up of the victim’s barefoot and a few drops of bright red blood falling on the pure white snow. Earlier, Paco had sat on the same bench praying, observed by a beautiful young mother who was carrying a bright blue umbrella and tying the shoelace of her young son, a symbolic Madonna who seems to foresee the murder.
In the final scene, Paco goes to the train station to find Luisa. Pressing his bloody hands against the window, he draws her off the train for a final murderous embrace, a shot that is held, then blurs and finally freezes, signifying the triumph of their passion.
A printed epilogue delivers the ironic moralizing punch line to the narrative. Three days later, Paco and Luisa were arrested in Valladolid (a city well known for its right-wing sentiments) and they never saw each other again.
Read more about this topic: Lovers (film)
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