La muchacha de las bragas de oro

Directed by Vicente Aranda and based on the novel by Juan Marsé from 1978, La muchacha de las bragas de oro follows Luis Forest (Lautaro Murua), whose peaceful life in coastal Sitges is suddenly disrupted by the coming of his niece Mariana (Victoria Abril).

Luis lives a solitary life in his big house, where he does not receive visitors and spends his time writing his memoirs. By writing his memoirs, he seeks some kind of redemption from his past as a Falangist, a period of his life that now haunts him. Like the calm before the storm, the unexpected arrival of Mariana and her photographer friend Elmyr (Perla Vonasek) marks a divide in the events of that summer, for what was considered unthinkable but mostly excommunicated to the domains of oblivion now presents itself as tempting as the forbidden fruit beckoning by its beguiling effect.

"Odio las puertas, son un elemento de incomunicabilidad burguesa." (I hate doors, they are elements of bourgeois incommunicability.) Mariana indicates after removing the doors of her bedroom, a decision that strikes as peculiar but also summons the voyeuristic gaze, and it will not be dissatisfied. Mariana is having an affair with Elmyr, whose depressive thoughts and tendencies, according to her, make them understand and help each other. Nonetheless, as the probing eye will attest, her demeanor is more mercurial than that.

It is known that one effect of prohibition is to awaken a desire that was not there before. A craving emerges if something is deemed forbidden, a craving that finds in transgression an emancipatory medium. In this sense, a regulation, that is, a device to reform what is considered wild if left alone, might undermine its own purpose. It is clear Mariana's intentions towards her uncle, meaning her reason for being there is not only the article she is writing about him. In the days after her coming, she will find different ways to voice her intentions. Intentions masquerading as playful sexual provocations that place the other in a position of guilty temptation.