La reine d'Espagne

It's the 1950s, and Arturo Ripstein is producing a movie in Spain with a mix of Hollywood and local talent. Spanish-born but now American flm star Penelope Cruz is the cast's lead. Except on the set, where director Clive Revill (playing a thinly disguised John Ford) doze in an alcoholic stupor, all is chaos, filled with gossip, affairs, and an attempted rescue of one of Miss Cruz' lovers from a political prison.

It's a sort of sequel to 1998's The Girl of Your Dreams, and it's very funny, a movie that looks like Kenneth Anger's fever dreams, and in which the actors think they can do things in reality as they do in the movies, so of course the cast includes Mandy Patinkin among the American cohort.

A second rate flick, made unpalatable by Trueba's childish political obsessions. Not that he is unique in such proclivities. Other countries have film industries, Spain "enjoys" an obscenely subsidized version of the Socorro Rojo.

Amusing and very underrated Spanish comedy, mocking on Hollywood golden age, with an interesting political background (mainly Franco dictatorship in Spain but also McCartyism in the United States). Penélope Cruz shines in the leading role. It is a sequel of a 1998 film by Fernando Trueba, The Girl of Your Dreams.

Writer/Director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, The Girl of Your Dreams, The Artist and the Model) revives the storyline and characters of The Girl of Your Dreams and places the tale (and stars from the original) in a slovenly montage of Span in the time of Franco. It desperately needs an editor.

Briefly the story relates Penélope Cruz, as the famous movie star Macarena Granada, who flees the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood to return to her roots in Spain where she has signed on to star in an epic film as Queen Isabella of Spain. Some would say it is enough simply to see Penélope Cruz on screen (she remains extraordinarily beautiful), but the story is so overwritten with meaningless side plots that make the very very long film become quite boring.

There are some fine actors involved – Mandy Patikin, Clive Revill, Antonio Resines, Ana Belén, Rosa Maria Sardà, Jorge Sanz, Javier Cámara, and an embarrassingly tedious role for Cary Elwes, but the bluster takes over and even the scenery takes second place to the paucity of significant story. Pass.

I don't think the ratings of this film is fair to the movie. I expected a bad bad movie, but that wasn't what I watched. I liked it! I was moved, it made me laugh and I think the way they incorporated the history of Spain was intelligent in the way they put a lot of references in the dialogue between the characters. Well done :)