Asignatura pendiente

"Asignatura pendiente" is the José's way of referring to his and Elena's relationship at the beginning of this movie. For him, the Franco regime's cultural policies prevented Spaniards from having a healthy attitude toward sex, hence preventing him and Elena from having a fulfilling relationship in their youth. When they meet over ten years later in 1975, José proposes taking care of this "unfinished business"--literally, an asignatura pendiente is a course that one has failed and must make up at a later time. Director José Luis Garci does a good job of representing the giddiness of a new, joyful relationship. As the movie goes on, there are suggestions that the relationship is nourished by its implicit contrariness to the Franco regime, and the Caudillo's death thus signals a change in the relationship as it does in the country as a whole. Like Fernando Colomo's "Tigres de papel", "Asignatura pendiente" gives an interesting, often funny account of the psychological effects of the transition to democracy. Plus, we are treated to a sequence of documentary footage and a dramatization of the frustrations that went along with the sense of impending change and liberation. For this representation of the times and the appreciation of the complicated nature of mature love, "Asignatura pendiente" deserves to be called a classic of Spanish cinema.

José Luis Garci's first feature-length film, he had previously made a few shorts, coincided and more or less collided head on with that delicate time in Spanish contemporary history now known as the Transition. Franco had died, parliamentary dignitaries had to vote themselves out of existence so as to make way for a referendum leading to a democratic system, and Juan Carlos was awaiting in the side-lines (in Portugal) to step in and regain his throne. A tricky, tricky time; and at times, looking back, I think that the way the whole change-over was carried out was almost miraculous. Fortunately the armed forces went along with the process and when on the 23rd February 1981 a gun-toting colonel took over the parliament, they stood by the King. Since that attempted - and ridiculous - coup, Spain has not wavered, but has forged ahead and taken its place in the world. I would even say `its rightful place'.

Garci is more or less the same age as myself; so evidently we experienced that period of time with some kind of similarity, though perhaps with rather differing finalities. He was into films; I was into trying to get in love with any of those beautiful Spanish women ................

I suppose, looking back, we can surmise that `Asignatura Pendiente' is not that bad, being his first real film. The fact is that with the lifting of censorship there was a plethora of films with explicit sex content of all kinds; some not too bad, I suppose; most were definitely rubbish. But there is the point: the things younger Spanish people of those times, now getting on for 60, were denied in their lives. They were denied sexual relations by both ecclesiastical hierarchy and the creaking Franco régime. Young women had to be virgins on their wedding day. That, today, sounds positively prehistoric; my questions on whether young men should also be virgins when walking down the aisle went unanswered. By 1977 I had been in Spain for just five years, and evidently I still had a lot to learn.

I have said elsewhere on IMDb that in Spanish cinematography, you should divide everything into before 1975 and everything since then. This film by Garci sits just on the arbitrary dividing line, but architecturally it belongs to before 1975, though its explicit content obviously places it in post-1975. However, it has that rather old-fashioned way of putting films on the screen, so inherent in Spanish productions of the time. This feeling is heightened by the presence of José Sacristán: an actor who has never drawn my attention for any reason whatsoever as his tasteless sojourns in films of weightless insipidness which he went in for, making as many as ten films a year, would not excite the curiosity of a fly. He does not act: he machine-guns his dialogues just about the same in everything he has ever done. In `Asignatura Pendiente' nothing changes and he plays his role ditto countless others.

Fortunately Garci went on to make some memorable films, such as Volver a Empezar (1982), El Abuelo (1998)(qv), Canción de Cuna (1994), La Herida Luminosa (1997)(qv), You're the One (una historia de entonces) (2000)(qv), with which he redeems himself for a rather mediocre first film, or for disasters like Asignatura Aprobada (1987). By far the best, his masterpiece, is El Abuelo and is worth going out of your way to see, either in a cinema or on video/DVD. Because of Garci's penchant for getting overly enthusiastic with the so-called `golden days of Hollywood' as well as his own films generally being of the kind looking back in time, it would seem that Garci is the director most associated with that transitional period.

The showing of this film on TV now was made to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of the new Spanish Constitution, likewise heralded with all kinds of reports, documentaries and other `memos', mostly in the vein of `here is how we were then'. I can remember all that as if it were but yesterday: but what most surprises me is that all that seems to belong on another planet, such are the tremendous changes that have taken place in a bare 25 years.

If this film is representative of those years, you may well conjecture, as I do, that quite a struggle was going on deep inside the sociological structures making up the country, still rather wobbly at the knees and not too sure of where it was going. Likewise, `Asignatura Pendiente' only just barely rates wobbling out of an `insufficient'.

The film opened, at the time, an unexplored field in our cinema: the recovery of a historic moment, the most immediate, which until then had been concealed or distorted, a fundamental period of time in the Spanish political transition. Dealing with a labor lawyer called José (José Sacristán) with a lot of Union work, he lives a comfortable life with his wife (Silvia Tortosa) and children; one day, he meets his great love Elena (Fiorella Faltoyano) from his teenage years. So, the two old friends meet each other 10 years after they spent summers vacations together in the little town of Miraflores, in the surroundings of Madrid when they were young. He goes on secretly in love with her and they begin to fall in love again. The film covers the period from October 1, 1975 to the beginning of the summer of 1976, historic dates in the evolution of our democracy, marked by the last days of Franco, as well as the appointment of the first government of the monarchy.

It is a generational film, full of references, emotional, sad and funny, about the frustration of thirty-somethings who saw how their most logical desires, their will to live, had been frozen in an era in which freedom was not tolerated. It represented one of the greatest successes of the cinema of the transition and over the years, the film has become part of the popular heritage of modern Spain. ¨Asignatura Pendiente¨ is set against the well-crafted backdrop of Generalismo Francisco Franco's illness and death, along with the old songs of Gloria Lasso, El Dúo Dinamico, Los Llopis, Los 5 Latinos. Continuing along the path taken in his films as a screenwriter, José Luís Garci achieves great success with his first feature film as a director, made in collaboration with Jose Maria González Sinde, which becomes a key work of the Spanish transition. Narrated through a long flashback, over the years it becomes even more evident that while the political and sentimental background is developed quite well, the bland adultery that is told in the foreground is somewhat tiring, boring and with too many inane conversations in bed. The film was a great success despite the uneven final, containing a long dedication which begins: ¨To us, when there was no remedy, that imperial world in CinemaScope and De Luxe color, which had been promised to us at school and in so many speeches and sermons, would never exist¨, while Gloria Lasso sings: Luna de miel (Honeymoon), and by the time of its premiere, the audience stood up in the cinema and applauded with all their hearts. The two main characters: José Sacristan and Fiorella Faltoyano are quite good and sympathetic, but the character played by Sacristan is a bit heavy and annoying, and can be quite off-putting at times. They are joined by a good cast of supporting characters, including the following: Antonio Gamero as 'Trotsky', Silvia Tortosa, Héctor Alterio, Simón Andreu, María Casanova, the latter would become a regular actress for director Garci.

The motion picture was compellingly directed by Jose Luis Garci (El Crack, Luz Domingo) who won one Academy Award for ¨Volver a Empezar¨. After leaving behind his work as a screenwriter, storyteller, essayist, critic and short film director, Garci made his first movie this Asignatura Pendiente. José Luis Garci is without a doubt one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film in Spain and perhaps the best known writer in the country. He often co-writes his scripts with his friend Horacio Valcárcel. After his Oscar win in 1983 for Best Foreign Language Film with Begin the Beguine (1982), he received three further nominations in that category with Double Feature (1984), Course Completed (1987) and The Grandfather (1998), making him the most-nominated Spanish director in that category. Garci has left a distinguished talent in his successful movies throughout the years: La Cabina (1972), Las Verdes Praderas (1979), El Crack (1981), Volver a Empezar (1982), Canción De Cuna (1994), La Herida Luminosa (1997), El Abuelo (1998), Tiovivo c. 1950 (2004) and Ninette (2005) , among others. Rating : 6.5/10. Better than average and well worth seeing . For these reasons is essential and indispensable watching .