Xavier Grandès

Adolpho Arrietta was a major figure in the new cinemas that appeared in the sixties and seventies in various countries. Thus he became one of the fundamental film directors in the history of Spanish cinema. As with Buñuel, a long exile seems to have been the condition that allowed his work to keep up with the most important trends in the cinema of his era. Throughout the seventies he produced a series of “punk à la française” films, as Severo Sarduy called them, which for their originality and influence are among the most important in French cinema of that decade. In 1989 he returned to Madrid, and despite noteable intervals, which other Spanish film directors of his generation also experienced, his work proceeded. Alone, like in the era of El crimen de la pirindola but with a digital camera, he produced what for the moment is his latest film: Vacanza permanente (2006).Read More »

Luis Eduardo Aute proposed to Arrietta to make an episode for the TV series Delusions of love, and he decided to adapt La Chatte, Colette: the story of a woman, a man, and a cat. The themes of love, sex and jealousy are portrayed both tragically and comically, and the power of this film is to show both perspectives in parallel.Read More »

Adolpho Arrietta was a major figure in the new cinemas that appeared in the sixties and seventies in various countries. Thus he became one of the fundamental film directors in the history of Spanish cinema. As with Buñuel, a long exile seems to have been the condition that allowed his work to keep up with the most important trends in the cinema of his era. Throughout the seventies he produced a series of “punk à la française” films, as Severo Sarduy called them, which for their originality and influence are among the most important in French cinema of that decade. In 1989 he returned to Madrid, and despite noteable intervals, which other Spanish film directors of his generation also experienced, his work proceeded. Alone, like in the era of El crimen de la pirindola but with a digital camera, he produced what for the moment is his latest film: Vacanza permanente (2006).Read More »

A girl’s obsession with firemen causes her to start a fire at her own home in order to trap a fireman in her room. The film features the last onscreen performance by Dionys Mascolo (writer, political activist, known for his voiceover in India Song and for his love affair with Marguerite Duras) and one of the earliest appearances of Pascal Greggory.Read More »

Grenouilles (Frogs) is perhaps Arrieta’s strangest film. Anne Wiazemsky plays a beautiful Russian spy, Nora, who arrives on an island in the middle of the ocean, to avenge the betrayal of her lover, the artist Tibor. Other characters include a spy from UNESCO, a mysterious stranger who is plotting the end of the world, and a gang of thieves disguised as frogmen…Read More »

Grenouilles (Frogs) is perhaps his strangest film. Anne Wiazemsky plays a beautiful Russian spy, Nora, who arrives on an island in the middle of the ocean, to avenge the betrayal of her lover, the artist Tibor. Other characters include a spy from UNESCO, a mysterious stranger who is plotting the end of the world, and a gang of thieves disguised as frogmen….Read More »