LA VIRGIN DE LA LUJURIA (LUST FOR A VIRGIN)

Mexico, 2002, 100 minutes, Colour.
Luis Filipe Tovar, Ariana Gil, Patricia Reyes Spindola.
Directed by Arturo Ripstein.

Lust for a Virgin is a very complex film. Running for two and a half hours, it is very theatrical in style, generally confining all its action to the Hotel Ofelia.

While the material would make greater impact with Spanish and Latin American audiences, other audiences need quite a deal of historical background to appreciate what is being said, the themes explored, the critiques being made.

The film is set in the 1930s, in Mexico, and focuses on this hotel. The various characters are both realistic and symbolic. Nacho is a Mexican who is a waiter, put in his place by the owner of the hotel, Don Lazaro, who is very much pro-Franco. He is forced then to support visits who want to kill Franco. Lola is a prostitute, alcoholic and opium-addicted, who is focused on Gardenia Wilson, a masked wrestler. The film shows the interactions between this group as well as a photographer who spends his time making tableaux for strange photographs, using actors to set them up. Ultimately, there is a plan to assassinate Franco.

The film is visually surrealistic, exotic in its style, the colours of the Hispanic tradition. It recreates the period of the 30s, the enclosed atmosphere of fascist oppression.

Commentators point out that director Arturo Ripstein is in the tradition of Luis Bunuel, following his themes of individuality, loneliness, sexual relationships as well as cinematically offbeat critiques of society. Ripstein has made over fifty films since 1966. He made a film in English, Foxtrot in 1976 with Peter O’Toole? and Charlotte Rampling.

1. Mexico in the 1930s, after the civil war in Spain, local politics, Spanish politics, the refugees?

2. The world of the bar, the arcades outside, the streets, the rain? A film of interiors? The corridors, the locked rooms? Décor? The importance of the musical score, especially the opening with The Mikado, the characters singing the songs, the melodies of The Mikado with their own republican or Mexican words?

3. The film as an interior piece, like theatre, heightened melodrama, stylised?

4. The title, the focus on Ignacio, sexuality, men and women, relationships, pornography, perversity? The symbolic use of sexuality?

5. Nacho and his world, his age, experience, his being alone, his private room, like a cellar, the photos, his sexual behaviour, the fetishes? The bar owner taunting him about his Indian background? His work, efficiency? The threats from the owner? His manner of treating the customers, excellent at his work? The republicans from Spain? Finding Lola in the bar, wanting to help her, preoccupied with her, hiding her, locking her away, needing her? The sexual relationship, the violence, the fantasy? The republican photographer finding his secrets? The photos, his becoming a cinema hero, re-creating the hero fantasies?

6. Lola, in the bar, a prostitute, her love for the wrestler? With Nacho, drunk, sad, locked in, leaving? Her being exploited? The threat of being ousted from the country? The attitude of the owner? The return of the wrestler, his disdain of her? The life of the movies and its effect on him? Her feeling rejected and hopeless?

7. The bar owner, his sympathies for Franco, his having to tone them down for Mexico, his dream of returning to Spain? His own roots? The migrants, the customers, the Indians? A mixture of the benign and the dictatorial?

8. The rang of customers in the bar, the men with their meetings and discussions, the meals, the drinking, the flare-ups? Prejudice exercised against Nacho? Violence? The republican finding Nacho's photos, friendship, collaboration, the new photos, the world of cinema? The black and white photography, the echoes of the films of the time?

9. Gerard, the wrestler, relationship with Lola, masked, unmasked? Going into films, his being transformed, changed attitudes towards Lola?

10. The world of the bar as an enclosed microcosm, especially of the Hispanic world of the '30s?