Victoria Abril

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Harshly treated by the critics on release, of Pedro Almodovar’s work, Kika is perhaps the one that most benefits from re-viewing and re-assessment.

The story of Kika (an astonishing Veronica Forque), a Madrid makeup artist whose relationship with Ramon (Alex Cassanovas) leads to criminal schemes involving Kika’s maid Juana (Rossy DePalma), Jauan’s amorous, criminal brother Pablo (Santiago Lajusticia) and Ramon’s youth-obsessed father Nicholas (Peter Coyote). Overseeing it all is the muckraking, reality tabloid television show presided over by the formidable Andrea Scarface (a uniquely attired Victoria Abril).Read More »

Set at the end of the 1940s, this drama about Pedro (Imanol Arias), a medical researcher, and his relationships with his family and women underscores the mood of repression that dominated Spain during Franco’s fascist regime. Pedro lives in a boardinghouse and is attracted to Dorita (Victoria Abril), his beautiful neighbor. He wiles away his time with a wealthy friend and generally leads a normal life until he tries to save the life of a young woman who has had an abortion that went tragically wrong. He fails, and the woman’s boyfriend comes after him, believing that he killed her. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

Plot: Two different mothers in two different worlds. The first one from comes from the western world, lives in France and after a tragic lost of her child is trying to continue living and find purpose of it. The other is coming from completely different world, very traditional, patriarchal society, where things change very slowly and where the women are married as exchange for money. The first one wants to die, the other wants to live. Their parallel paths converge when the one from the western society comes in the world of the other in the east. This intrusion turns, unintentionally and unconsciously into a very violent one.Read More »

Luis, an aging Falangist author with guilty conscious, is writing fake memoirs. Two reporters, his niece Mariana and her lesbian friend Elmyr, arrive to do a piece on him. While fact-checking his memoirs Mariana becomes attracted to him.Read More »

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In a small town outside of Barcelona, Spain, José Maria is a teenager with a big problem, he imagines that he is really a woman. While he begins to show his desire to be a woman through his appearance, the reactions within his household make things more difficult for him. His rude father is a male chauvinist who, afraid of his son’s softness, puts him to work chopping wood. Then, his father takes him to a cabaret show, to expose José Maria to women. However at a show, José Maria is exposed to a dancer named Bibi, who is a transgender woman, for the first time.Read More »

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Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.Read More »

In Madrid, the family of Don Luis, his wife Dolores and their children, Manolita and Luisito, share the daily life of the Civil War with their maid and neighbours. Despite having failed his exams, Luisito wants his father to buy him a bicycle. However, the situation forces them to delay the purchase and the delay, like the war itself, is to last much longer than expected.

The movie, and the book it was drawn from, show how daily life was conducted during the war. Unexpected things happen, but people find ways to survive. Above all, it is a story of survival and adaptation.Read More »

“Just tell me one thing frankly. Is this monkey really your lover?”

It is and it isn’t unlikely material for Nagisa Ôshima. The element of transgressive love is here, but this time, it’s in a dry comedy whose centerpiece is a diplomat’s wife’s extramarital affair with a sensitive, somewhat unstable chimpanzee (aren’t they all?). Charlotte Rampling is the woman, Anthony Higgins is the diplomat, and Victoria Abril is the housekeeper who develops a mysterious allergy, probably but not necessarily to the titular Max.Read More »