Tristana
Short description
Tristana, an orphaned young woman, is taken in by Don Lope, a respected but aging Toledo gentleman who becomes her guardian and, in time, her lover. When she falls for the painter Horacio, she tries to break free of the older man's hold on her life. The story follows the shifting balance of power between the two across the years that follow.
Luis Buñuel directed and co-wrote the film with Julio Alejandro, working from Benito Pérez Galdós's novel. It was the thirteenth of the fifteen films Buñuel directed, arriving between The Milky Way and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Catherine Deneuve plays Tristana, with Fernando Rey as Don Lope and Franco Nero as Horacio; the credited cast runs to twenty-nine names. Shot as a Spanish, Italian and French co-production, the film runs 98 minutes.
On IMDb it holds 8.4/10 from 34 reviews, while on TMDB it has 7.2/10 from 287 votes, a gap that suggests critics responded to the film more strongly than the wider public did.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to the film's director, Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), many distinctive traits of Tristana, including the habit of asking strangers to choose just one of two practically identical objects, mirrored distinctive traits of his own sister's character.
- The film met with fierce resistance from the censors of the Francoist government of Spain. Buñuel insisted on filming the film as early as 1962, but the Francisco Franco regime (1892-1975) objected to the film's themes and ideas, which the autocratic and pro-Catholic government considered subversive. Scenes of Tristana's seduction and Don Lope's speeches against the church were absolutely unacceptable to the censors. The government's attention was also drawn to Buñuel's recent film, 'Viridiana' (1961). Buñuel had hoped that the release of 'Viridiana' would mark his return to his homeland, but the Francoist regime found it too subversive as well, and immediately banned it. It took the director another eight years to convince the censors and begin filming 'Tristana'.
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