BULGARIAN LOVERS (LOS NOVIOS BULGAROS)

Spain, 2002, 95 minutes, Colour.
Fernando Guillen Cuervo, Ditran Biba, Anita Sinkovic.
Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia.

Bulgarian Lovers is a film designed for gay and camp sensibilities. It also focuses on social situations in Spain, the wealthy middle class, the refugees from the Balkans and Eastern Europe and their exploitation of their new situation, especially with East European Mafia connections and smuggling. The film combines these themes in a focus on a fortysomething lawyer, his friends, his cruising gay circles and picking up Eastern Europeans. The lawyer falls in love with a Bulgarian who is waiting for his girlfriend to come to Spain. The lawyer allows himself to be drawn into the schemes of the Bulgarian, lending him money, allowing him to go away, getting deeper and deeper into frauds connected with Bulgarian authorities and nuclear substances. The film also includes a visit by the lawyer to Bulgaria so that the film contrasts the Eastern and Western European cultures.

The film is of interest in terms of focusing on situations in Spanish society at the beginning of the century.

1. The impact of the film? Designed for gay and camp audiences? For the average audience? Social themes, sexual themes?

2. The Madrid settings, apartments, streets, offices? The Turkish baths? The clubs? The contrast with Bulgaria and the city, the apartments, the streets? The contrast between East and West? Dramatised by the musical score?

3. The title, the focus on the Bulgarians, their coming to the West, their sexual exploitation of the Spanish? The Spanish lawyer and his falling in love with the Bulgarian?

4. The character of the lawyer: Daniele and his life, work, friends, the gay baths, picking up men, attracted to Kyril, bringing him home, the sexual encounter, the affair? The phone calls from the girlfriend? His lending money, becoming more deeply involved? His suspicions, the radioactivity on Kyril's hands? His disappearances? Giving him the gold? The going to Bulgaria, celebrating the wedding, the attraction of the young cousin? His resisting? The return to Spain, the support of Kalina, encountering Kyril, his desperation, going to jail? The pawnshop, allowing him to keep the gold? The infatuation - a future, with the young cousin?

5. Kyril, the emigration to Spain, the double-dealings, the Bulgarian authorities, the frauds, the money, the cars, the jewellery? The bisexuality? His seeing himself as heterosexual, his girlfriend? Yet remaining in a relationship with Daniele? His relationship with the other Bulgarians, the return with Kalina, the ceremonial wedding, the return to Spain, the collapse of the scheme, his desperation, being allowed to keep the jewellery? His future?

6. The other Spaniards, the cross-section of middle-class professionals, the gay friendships? The lawyer and his support of Daniel and helping him? Getting Kyril from the police?

7. The Bulgarians, their exploiting the Spaniards, the double-deals, the consular authorities? Fraud and radioactive material?

8. Kalina, her hopes, coming to Spain, exuberance, with Kyril, the wedding, the return, her appreciation of the situation with Daniele?

9. A combination of a focus on sexual issues and sensibility, love and romance, social comment?