Ask Grannie

The Spanish film festival was on in Sydney last week and a friend of mine who had lived in Spain, rang me. We decided on a film called 'The Anarchist's wife' which had good reviews while I dodged a ticket to an opera with a 'modern interpretation.' Arriving at dusk, I was offered a pamphlet which seemed to be a plot outline. The foyer was full of Sydney's Spanish population. I lined up at the box office to get my ticket to find another actress serving."How's things?""Fine thanks." "You?" "Fine." You often see familiar faces in box offices. I looked down at my pamphlet to find it an Anarchist manifesto.

The audience was the usual unruly bunch of what used to be called 'Pseuds'. Young and old pretending to know all about what they were about to see, plus a sprinkling of spaniards who were loud and happy and seemed to have brought their dinner. As the lights dimmed, there was no cessation of noise and I moved my head to one side to avoid the block of heads eagerly kissing each other in the seats in front.

The Anarchist's wife was of unearthly beauty and worryingly young. She seemed to have a very grown up child, a succession of fine fur coats and quite a lot of real estate. The Anarchist read out stirring speeches on rebel radio from besieged townships and sooner or later, they were parted. Ho Hum. Still somewhere along this unlikely fairy story, the wondrous earnestness of their acting and the domestic troubles of the 'interesting' times they were living through caught me unawares. I was carried along, fine fur coats and all through an hour and a half of Spanish Civil War and its consequences and came out feeling I knew a bit more about this time, which figures so heavily in our modern history. Especially the horrible aftermath of Spanish refugees and their flight to France. Strange to say, the wife didn't age much but her child grew to maidenhood and the Anarchist himself looked very worn. Rightly, as he had been through a civil war, a world war and a concentration camp.

I think that is the virtue of film festivals - you get to see how other countries handle their culture. The blackness which underlies the Spanish soul and sits side by side with its lustrous beauty, is a little unsettling. On screen they portray far more than Anglo Celts do - you wander into the loo with their characters and watch them in all sorts of daily activities that we would close the door on but still, they have a siren song of loveliness and honesty that is appealing. I'm not sure there was much of it in this film but it was alluring in the best sense. Not the least being the ugly rebellion of the long suffering daughter.

So...ask your parents or grandparents, as the film recommends us to do and see what they say about those times.

To see a german language trailer of 'The Anarchist's Wife' click here: