By Lida Prypchan
(Based on the movie “The Deputy” or “The Immoral Life of a Public Man,”
directed by Eloy de la Iglesia and starring Luisa San José and José Sacristan)
directed by Eloy de la Iglesia and starring Luisa San José and José Sacristan)
Accompanied by the same as always (loneliness), the congressman is thinking; a transcendental fact manages to make him mature more in a few hours than he would in 20 years. Ecstasy and despair are given to him by clandestineness: he belongs to a subversive group and is homosexual. His first contacts are in the recesses of the metro, in the middle of prison overcrowding and in public bathrooms. In the Spanish Socialist Party he meets Carmen, whom he marries, with her understanding of his homosexual experiences. Many years have passed, there are rumors that he will be elected Secretary General of the party; at the same time he believes that his homosexuality was left behind, stowed away in those sordid hidden places, but he meets a bunch of guys who are gay for dough (which in colloquial language is money and not bread). One of the boys, for the love of dough, tries to get Robert to fall in love with him, hired by the ruling political group that wants to discredit him. Everything is complicated because the young man falls in love with and becomes friends with Carmen, with whom he also made love, and the three are the dough who form a big bread basket. Realizing that the boy does not serve the purpose they hired him for, the people who hired him kill him in Roberto’s apartment.
Roberto and the guy (Juan) give good performances; on the other hand, Carmen is an interesting character, not only because of her excellent performance but also because of her message of complicity and solidarity with Roberto. The most significant scenes were three. The first: that in which Roberto imagines himself in the defendant’s dock, beginning to describe his beginnings as a homosexual, he being his own defense attorney; the second: that stream of office workers (sons of bureaucracy), reading Roberto’s criminal record with lightning speed, the questioning and his answers, while he guides us giving his impressions (i.e. a retrospective view of events); the third: some orgies in which master classes on fellatio are held with such a naive background music that it becomes a cruel joke. The image very sharp, the audio perfect, the camera work good without being excellent, and the photography the same.
Among the beautiful things: the understanding between Roberto and Carmen. It is necessary to add, regarding Roberto’s sexual clandestineness, that what is striking is that it was not worthy of criticism, as he always spoke the truth to Carmen. Regarding everybody else, he had no reason to walk around with a sign on his forehead that read “homosexual” nor to give explanations to anyone about what he did with his life. Evidently he was bisexual; with regard to his homosexuality, should it be criticized or approved of? My opinion: neither one nor the other. What is worthy of criticism are the nefarious consequences that it entailed: the death of a young man and Roberto’s political collapse.
Clandestineness held its charms for Roberto and, unfortunately, he could not evade its traps, but his honesty to his wife is admirable. It would be sad if he were one of those who spend their time delivering speeches that their actions ultimately contradict. This brings to my memory a very “honorable” man who is very strict as a father, who boasts of being a very good father and husband and has a mistress and two children he abandoned. An honorable hypocrite!
