THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406280513
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Medium
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{REST} As Bette Davis said in ``Now, Voyager'': ``We have the stars. Don't let's ask for the moon.''
``Belle Epoque,'' this year's Oscar winner as best foreign film, comes from Spain, although it plays like a French product. It's a bit of ``Tom Jones'' with more than a little of the style of Ingmar Bergman's ``Smiles of a Summer Night.'' Its subtext deals both with politics and religion, but for the most part, it's out for fun.
It doesn't look like an Oscar winner - and only the peculiar vagaries of the Oscar voters could possibly have given it the prize over ``Farewell, My Concubine.''
Still, ``Belle Epoque'' is exactly what it sets out to be - an irreverent and mischievous sex farce with mature sensibilities and delightfully cynical asides.
Jorge Sanz, a handsome young deserter from the Spanish Republican army, is wandering the countryside in 1931 when he is ``adopted'' by a wealthy, free-thinking, painter who has four daughters.
If you've heard the one about the farmer's daughter, you get the idea of what follows. Just multiply it by four.
Each of the daughters eyes the lad and makes her move - and he never moves away. His wide-eyed, ``gee whiz'' attitude becomes a little unbelievable as the film wears on, but we are told that he is a former seminarian.
The film, directed by Fernando Trueba, is drenched in Catholic guilt as all the characters pray for themselves during or after each tryst.
All this is tinged with the politics of the era. The monarchy is just fading, and a republic, at least to the characters, means free thinking and free love. Even the death of a priest, supposedly meant to be symbolic of something, is treated with dry, eccentric wit.
Trueba aspires to the sophisticated style of early Jean Renoir, but his film is mainly a laughable tease. The young women's characters are only fleetingly developed; they seem to lack real identity.
Perhaps most distinctive is Ariadna Gil as Violeta, the supposedly lesbian one, who makes love to Jorge while in drag. Another bemoans the death of her husband before she makes love to the visitor on the banks of the river where her husband drowned.
It is ironic that the film takes on much-needed weight when it briefly deals with the older members of the cast. The girls' mother is an opera singer who imagines herself to be a premier diva. When she comes home, with her lover in tow, old love is revived with the crusty father of the brood. Fernando Fernan Gomez, a veteran of more than 150 films in Europe, brings world-weary wisdom to the role of the eccentric father.
Gender warfare, sexual identity, religion and the Spanish Civil War all get a nod here. The real concern, though, is having fun.
Come to think of it, maybe they should give an Oscar, once in awhile, to movies that are just fun. by CNB