(1992; The Age of Beauty, Spanish) A sweetly salacious comedy - winner of Academy Award for Best Foreign Film - from director Fernando Trueba, follows the amorous adventures of Fernando (Jorge Sanz), a handsome, youthful deserter during the Spanish Civil War.

In February 1931 somewhere in Spain, two members of the Civil Guard of King Carlos's shaky regime capture Fernando, who as a bugler abandoned his military unit in Jaca; but when the older man decides to release the young fellow, the more loyalist son-in-law shoots his father-in-law dead, then in grief kills himself.

Fernando arrives at a brothel, still wearing a cuff on one wrist, where the madam offers him a room for the night if he can wait until after midnight. While waiting for the customers to vacate the rooms, he makes acquaintance with Don Manolo (Fernando Fernan Gomez), playing cards with the priest and mayor, who proffers his home for the night.

Manolo, a painter whose opera-singing wife is away on a year-long tour through the Americas, tells Fernando that he's an old libertine living like a bourgeoisie because he's impotent with anyone other than his wife. Preparing a splendid meal for his host, Fernando explains that though he spent six years in a seminary on scholarship, where he learned to cook, he's agnostic. Manolo requests the former seminarian read from the Bible to put him to sleep.

Accompanying Manolo to the depot of Arcos where he intends to take the train to Madrid, Fernando has a change of heart when he sees Manolo's four gorgeous daughters getting off for a visit with their father. Making up an excuse that he missed his train, a ruse Manolo anticipated, Fernando returns to the elderly painter's home to meet the girls, each of whom he finds desirous, delicious, delectable, daringly darling, in turn.

First he kisses & fondles Rocio (Maribel Verdú), but she's engaged to the gangly Juanito (Gabino Diego), a young teacher who lives with his rich, monarchist mother, Doña Asun, who wants him to remain with her at home or enter a monastery. When Fernando expresses his love for her to Manolo, the father cautions that gaining a son-in-law will result in his losing a friend.

For the carnival, the girls dress Fernando in the black dress and white apron of a domestic servant; after dancing the subversive tango together, Violeta (Ariadna Gil), in the costume of a soldier, takes him to a hayloft and "rapes" the maid. Upon hearing of their copulation, Manolo exclaims: "Miracle!" Violeta, a veterinarian who thinks of herself as a man, dismisses the occasion as meaningless.

Next Clara (Miriam Diaz-Aroca), a lusty widow, lures Fernando to the same spot beside the river where her husband Higinio drowned. Meanwhile, Juanito gets the priest to excommunicate him from the Church and renounces the Carlists in an effort to prove his love for Rocio, a republican - whom he assumes will want to participate in an orgy of free love.

The youngest daughter Luz (Penélope Cruz) jealously watches each of her older sisters offer up "the dark sex between [their] thighs" (a line Manolo quotes to Fernando from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain). The girls' mother Amalia (Mary Carmen Ramirez) makes her appearance with her manager and benefactor, Danglard, who's also her jealous lover. "And now to get them married," says Amalia when she espies Luz and Fernando in an affectionate embrace. But on their wedding day, with the Republicans having wrested power from the king, the couple and the family find the priest indisposed.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .