ELISSA MY LOVE

Spain, 1977, 125 minutes, Colour.
Geraldine Chaplin, Fernando Rey, Ana Torent.
Directed by Carlos Saura.

Elissa My Love is an interesting, puzzling personal drama from one of Spain's leading directors of the '70s and '80s, Carlos Saura. His success with Anna and the Wolves led to a sequel, Raise Ravens. The film brought to the screen the talents of the young Ana Torent. Raise Ravens was also his first film with his wife Geraldine Chaplin. The present film followed. Geraldine Chaplin also appeared in his satiric allegory of post-Franco Spain, Mama Turns 100. Following this, Saura filmed the rehearsals of a flamenco ballet based on Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding.

The film plays with time, personal identity, themes of family, love and desertion. There are also undertones of violence. Veteran Spanish actor Fernando Rey portrays a novelist visited by his daughters. Elissa, played by Geraldine Chaplin, stays with him and in their time together their identities seem to fuse and light is thrown on each of the characters and their dilemmas. There is beautiful colour photography, a selection of contemporary classical music by such composers as Eric Satie and the film has the aspect of a dream, the type of film that stays in the memory to haunt and to suggest rather than to draw conclusions.

1. The work of Carlos Saura, his preoccupation with memory and identity, family, fact and fiction? Persons as symbols of one another? The Spanish tone of his film?

2. The strong contribution of the stars? The colour photography, Spanish atmosphere? The score and the mood of the modern classics and piano accompaniment?

3. How well did the film work on the basic level of narrative and straightforward plot: Luis and his life, his having abandoned his wife, living alone? Elissa and her marriage to Antonio, its break-up and her visit to her father? Isabel and Julian and their family? Luis' illness, the visit, the meal, the departure? Elisa’s staying? Talking, sharing one another's company, growing in understanding? Luis' death and Elisa’s rejection of Antonio?

4. The complexity with the opening and end of the film the same: the car and the long shot of its arrival? The voice-over of reality and Luis' novel? The irony of Luis speaking for his character Elissa? The masculine for the feminine? The irony that this would be later read aloud by the real Elissa? The framework for interaction and understanding? How much of Luis' fictional character is the real Elissa? How much Luis? The fusion of the masculine and the feminine? Luis' understanding of Elissa and her experience? The comparison with Elisa’s own understanding? The theme of empathy and the merging of father and daughter? The quality of their relationship? Sharing and giving, supporting?

5. The irony of the flashbacks where Fernando Rey plays Luis again but Geraldine Chaplin plays her mother? The flashbacks as Elisa’s memories? The comparison with reality and Isabel's comment on detail? The seemingly 'incestuous' tones of the flashbacks and actor and actress portraying the different characters? The present and the importance of memories? The unreliability of detail in memory? The vivid impact of the core of memory? The present understood by the past? The present interpreting the past?

6. The symbolic insertion of the story of the murdered woman? Luis' explanation of the story and his own discovery of the identity of the killer? The importance of visualising the place? Elisa’s dreaming and the audience seeing the murder with Elissa personifying the murdered woman? Luis knowing the identity of the killer - who is the killer? Man, Lulls, Antonio?

7. Luis as person: sensitive, loving, his search for the truth, philosophy of life, probing values? Religious or not? The background of his leaving his wife? His relationship with his daughters? Illness and death? The importance of the story of the murder and his preoccupation with the identity of the killer?

8. Elissa as a person: her experience with Antonio, her love for her sister, love for her father? Her reading his novel? Her dreams? Her worries? The visit of Antonio and the discussion in the car, her telling the truth and hurting him, accusing him of selfishness, his retaliation?

9. Antonio and the break of the marriage? His love for Elissa? His visit? The memories in the car? The talk, the brutality of the truth, his pleading and her refusal?

10. The sketch of Isabel and Julian? The visit? Their marital tensions? Julian and business and his abrupt behaviour? Isabel confiding in Elsa about her lover? The bond between the two sisters? Their presence in the flashbacks? The differing memories? Differing relationship to their mother? To their father?

11. The character of the murdered woman and her adultery? The audience supplying understanding of this story and the use of the symbol?

12. Themes of relationships, family, the generations, life and love, death, regrets and suffering, truth and loneliness? The multiple strands of the plot and symbolism? A successful film? interesting? Entertaining?