I cannot believe that the first time I'd ever seen this movie was when it first showed at the theaters 10 years ago. My sole appreciation for it at the time was its lush scenery, witty humor, and its true-to-form Spanish-ness. And now, after all that time, it still reflects the two key words of its title -- it truly is ageless and beautiful. The scene is set in Spain towards the end of the Spanish Civil War when the country became a republic. The event (the War) effectively mirrors the premise of the story, I think -- and that is freedom (examined at the micro level, following the life of a very unconventional family for a few days; the family consists of a free-thinking artist father, a liberated chanteuse of a mother, who has a lover about whom the entire family knows, and four very different daughters: one tragic, one romantic, one idealistic, and one, an invert). The story moves quickly and is filled with lots of events that are too fantastical to believe could ever happen, but can and has at some point in history, I'm sure, so it adds to the surreality of it all. It is a very beautiful movie that needs to be part of a collection of anyone who considers him/herself a romantic idealist. The movie completes itself as a circle -- it begins with a single man (the extremely handsome Spanish man who frees all the daughters from the social mores of their time), traveling along a dusty road, heading towards the unknown, and ends with another single man (the father), who by his own choice, is once again self-exiled because of his art, traveling along his own dusty road, not knowing where he is headed this time that he has been left behind by his daughters, wife, and new son-in-law. ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!
Review of Belle Epoque
