| NOVICE CHASE : Luis Bunuel's Viridiana [6+/10] |
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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 | |
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Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is a devout novice nun, summoned out of her convent by her wealthy uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), who requests that she visit him on his rural Spanish estate. Don Jaime soon confesses his love for the comely blonde Viridiana - she supposedly reminds him of his late wife, who died on their wedding night. He asks Viridiana to dress in the wife's wedding dress and, when she complies, slips an anaesthetic into her evening meal. Waking up groggy the next day, the virginal Viridiana is shocked when Don Jaime confesses his plan had been to ‘take advantage' of her while she ‘slept,' only for his nerve to fail at the last minute. He proposes marriage, which Viridiana firmly rejects. Desolate, Don Jaime hangs himself with a child's skipping-rope. The idealistic, charitable Viridiana decides to offer lodging and food to the local beggars. But they prove less than ideal house-guests... Bunuel's films often caused controversy, and with Viridiana he caused the most sensational stir since the riotous reception for L'age d'or back in 1930 - the furore is well chronicled in John Baxter's informative biography, and also in Bunuel's own volume of memoirs My Last Breath. More than four decades on, Viridiana is still capable of raising eyebrows - but it hasn't really aged so well as Bunuel's best work such as Belle de Jour, The Exterminating Angel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or, indeed, L'age d'or. Whereas those pictures remain fascinating on their own terms, Viridiana relies heavily on viewers knowing the social and political context (and the sinister, religiose atmosphere of General Franco's Spain) which enabled Bunuel to cause such a ruckus. There's no mistaking the subversive content of the film (in-your-face phallic symbols abound) but the narrative format in which these ideas are contained is much more conventional than is usually the case with Bunuel: there are no dream or fantasy sequences; everything we see on screen is plausible and realistic; the pace is generally quite slow; Viridiana herself isn't an especially engaging figure; the film's most intriguing character - kinky, tormented aristocrat Don Jaime - exits before the halfway point. This all adds up to a viewing experience that often borders on the turgid - but every now and again Bunuel will slip in a moment sufficiently startling to keep us interested and awake. The most famous sequence is the beggars' banquet in which Viridiana's "guests" make the most of their hostess's absence and treat themselves to a slap-up, decadent dinner: at one point they briefly freeze in a pose which closely replicates Leonardo da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper. The picture is full of such ironic grace-notes: the rescue of a certain maltreated dog is an especially amusing and sour touch, summing up the picture's fundamental nihilist message (it's a waste of time trying to help out the unfortunate) in a blackly-comic, vaguely surreal vignette. Neil Young 13th March, 2005 VIRIDIANA : [6/10] : Mexico (Mex/Spn) 1961 : Luis BUNUEL : 90 mins seen at Baltic (centre for modern art), Gateshead (UK) 10th March 2005 - public show |
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