23/09/2024 - Paula Ortiz revisits the 1977 Spanish classic directed by Fernando Fernán Gómez and although visually the result is more sophisticated, narratively it is less charming

Paula Ortiz is passionate about visual aesthetics; as her earlier works demonstrate including Chrysalis [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Bride [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paula Ortiz
film profile] (which screened in the Zabaltegi section of the San Sebastian Film Festival nine years ago) and Teresa [+see also:
film review
film profile]. Now she returns to the Basque film festival in its official section (but in its special screenings, not competing for the Golden Shell) with The Red Virgin [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. It is a new recreation of a brutal event that took place in Spain in 1933 during the Second Republic, and which was already brought to the screen by the actor and filmmaker Fernando Fernán Gómez in 1977 with the film My Daughter Hildegart.

The weight of that film fell on a splendid Amparo Soler Leal, who, with her very traditional approachability, managed to inoculate with truth, energy and verismo a tremendous plot that began with the confession of a crime: the murder of the girl described in the title at the hands of her own mother, Aurora Rodríguez, who had meticulously conceived and fiercely educated her with the utopian mission of “changing the world”. That film was structured around a flashback in the form of a confession of the crime and its subsequent trial.

Now Ortiz has revisited this gruesome story - with a larger budget and great production effort of boutique hotel style costumes, photography and locations. With the help of her screenwriters Clara Roquet and Eduard Sola, she has changed the structure of the classic Spanish film (for example, we won't see the aforementioned trial), emphasising the role of the maid (played by Aixa Villagrán) and adding her trademark aesthetic touches.

Because Hildegart (played by an unusual Alba Planas) was programmed by Aurora to be the woman of the future, becoming one of the most brilliant and precocious feminist minds in Spain in the 1930s. But when she turns 18, the girl meets a handsome young man (played by Patrick Criado) who begins to show her another world outside the iron belt of maternal chastity, which will lead to an outcome that is equally atrocious.

But The Red Virgin ends up lacking the closeness and everydayness achieved by the Fernán Gómez - Soler Leal duo. It inevitably falls into the odious comparison between that great lady of Spanish cinema and the actress who plays the same crazy lady in this new version: a hieratic Najwa Nimri who - no matter how much breathy whispering comes wearily out of her throat - fails to convey the murkiness, mystery and mental short-circuit of a character as complex as she is disturbing, possessed by the jealousy and terror that the loss of control over her daughter produced in her; a sort of Spanish Carrie's mother - a fanatic in this case of ideological perfection - who, as Ortiz emphasises here, could not stand her daughter being a sexually free person while shouting from the rooftops that “love and revolution are incompatible!”.

The Red Virgin is a film by Amazon MGM Studios, Elastica (with executive production by María Zamora) and Avalon.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)