It was the second time Bunuel had directed Deneuve and she was probably never better than when she was directed by the master.
Like Juan Bardem's unfairly forgotten "calle mayor" ,"Tristana depicts a small Spanish town still entangled in religion.But the times are changing.Don Lope (Rey) has become an hedonist and he tells us that it's Mosis who made sex a sin.Tristana is his ward,but as she confesses it to the painter,"I'm his daughter and his wife" .
Tristana is perhaps Bunuel's most complex woman.The physical metamorphosis of Deneuve is stunning.From the virgin who puts her hair in braids to the bitchy one-legged woman ,she runs the whole gamut.She refuses marriage because it kills love,and when she finally becomes Lope's wife,she uses it as a way of humiliating and frustrating her old husband whom she despises .The noise in the corridor as Tristana walks on her crutches while Lope is sipping hot chocolate with his friends (priests) shows frustration as nobody but Bunuel can.
The dream,(Rey as a bell clapper),which will remain "Tristana"'s most famous scene, will puzzle the audience.The first time it had appeared ,I did not think at all it was a dream.Bunuel will take this technique to its absolute limits in "discreet charm of the bourgeoisie",his following work .
We find back some of Bunuel's permanent features in "Tristana" :Lope,full of jealousy and locking up his ward, is a distant cousin of the hero of "El" ;the deaf and dumb boy ,some kind of brother of Maria in "la mort en ce jardin";The old man who sees his youth slip away was already in "Viridiana" (Fernando Rey again);fetishism ;exhibitionism :in a memorable scene,Tristana ,who refuses to give herself to her future husband (the wedding scene follows the exhibitionist one)shows her magnificent body to the deaf and dumb boy,an outcast,the scum of the earth ,derisively.
Recommended,as anything Bunuel did.
Like Juan Bardem's unfairly forgotten "calle mayor" ,"Tristana depicts a small Spanish town still entangled in religion.But the times are changing.Don Lope (Rey) has become an hedonist and he tells us that it's Mosis who made sex a sin.Tristana is his ward,but as she confesses it to the painter,"I'm his daughter and his wife" .
Tristana is perhaps Bunuel's most complex woman.The physical metamorphosis of Deneuve is stunning.From the virgin who puts her hair in braids to the bitchy one-legged woman ,she runs the whole gamut.She refuses marriage because it kills love,and when she finally becomes Lope's wife,she uses it as a way of humiliating and frustrating her old husband whom she despises .The noise in the corridor as Tristana walks on her crutches while Lope is sipping hot chocolate with his friends (priests) shows frustration as nobody but Bunuel can.
The dream,(Rey as a bell clapper),which will remain "Tristana"'s most famous scene, will puzzle the audience.The first time it had appeared ,I did not think at all it was a dream.Bunuel will take this technique to its absolute limits in "discreet charm of the bourgeoisie",his following work .
We find back some of Bunuel's permanent features in "Tristana" :Lope,full of jealousy and locking up his ward, is a distant cousin of the hero of "El" ;the deaf and dumb boy ,some kind of brother of Maria in "la mort en ce jardin";The old man who sees his youth slip away was already in "Viridiana" (Fernando Rey again);fetishism ;exhibitionism :in a memorable scene,Tristana ,who refuses to give herself to her future husband (the wedding scene follows the exhibitionist one)shows her magnificent body to the deaf and dumb boy,an outcast,the scum of the earth ,derisively.
Recommended,as anything Bunuel did.