`Desire is sad', wrote W. Somerset Maugham half a century or more ago. Added to the fact that love is blind, which probably means more or less the same thing in the end anyway, the arbitrary ingredients imposed by a Ricardo Franco rather disposed toward somewhat outlandish plots that embark on not unfeasible lines but rather on some kind of metaphysical debauch, assures us of an unusual kind of cinematographic entertainment. Although Franco died after only three weeks filming, Fernando Bauluz continued the job, faithfully adhering to the outlined concepts; he had not much choice; any other deviation from the set piece would have been an abominable aberration. Three days after Ricardo Franco's burial the crew returned with great enthusiasm to the task of completing the film. Fele Martínez as the `nice' young man down the street with a `nice' job and a `nice' fiancée who are about to buy a `nice' apartment in a `nice' suburb, suddenly find their `nice' plans shattered by a not so `nice' Isabel (Ariadna Gil). This young actress's part in the film completely overshadows Martínez (Andrés); Ariadna Gil is brilliant; absolutely absorbed into the part of a schizophrenic who suffers from a `rare' degenerative disease which affects the brain, she delivers the punch with that `latina' aplomb and bravura which just makes or breaks the whole piece. Fele Martínez is no match for this Herculean tour de force; even Ana Risueño as Cinta leaves him in the shade in her worthy contribution. It is Ariadna Gil that holds you spellbound; it is Ariadna Gil who commands the screen, demands focus and masters the art of impossible rôles; it is Ariadna Gil and her extreme skills that stop the film from sliding into something murkily messy. As Ángel Fernández-Santos says, Ariadna Gil measures up to having to go beyond the terrible and beautiful catastrophe in Franco's complex and abrupt moral and poetic geography in `Lágrimas Negras'. Since a small part in `Lola' (1985') when she was 16, then going through dramatic art school in Barcelona, she has made a number of appearances on TV, the stage and in films, at last getting known in `Belle Époque' (1992) and `Tranvía a la Malvarrosa' (1996), both with scripts by Rafael Azcona (Logroño, 1926), as well as `Malena es Nombre de Tango (1996). Now screening, watch out for her in `Nueces para el Amor', an Argentinian-Spanish co-production in which she has to learn to speak with a `porteño' accent. Just turned 30, Ariadna Gil represents a new, vital generation of actresses who use intelligence above all else, and this is what makes beauty shine through with real force in any part she is given. This is a `set-piece' inasmuch that each step forward in the course of the film is certainly predictable; it is an `unset-piece' inasmuch that the handling of many scenes is not so typically logical or even logically typical. It is apparent at an early stage that the film will reach hopelessly tragical consequences, as the synchronised predictability drives inexorably towards the only possible outcome, despite the problem of having to try to escape from sublime banalities at frequent intervals. The story is right; Ariadna Gil is extremely right; but there is something which does not allow the whole to hang together. Maybe the music has something to do with it; Eva Gancedo says maybe it was her tribute, her homage, her requiem for Ricardo Franco; the music in itself is good, but it becomes overly evident, even reaching strident protagonism, especially in the closing scenes. The mysteriously warm pacific glow of sunset over Portuguese Atlantic contrasts pathetically with the lewd funeral pyre glowing obscenely over the sands in the final scenes, as the music swells and fills the screen and dashes all attempt at poignant delicacy at the end of a harsh drama.
