Between business and drama SINOPSIS: The owner of a large fortune Maria Jose used to burn through her life in search of meaningless entertainment, but one night, returning from another party, she was stopped by police with a request to help deliver to the hospital seriously injured girl. An unfortunate prostitute was cut by her own pimp. The victim died literally in the arms of Maria Jose, and this incident shocked the millionaire so much that she decided to change her life. Together with her close friend Karin, she opens a shelter in her own estate for former prostitutes, abandoned mistresses and women in difficult situations. But not all of their potential clients accept a generous offer. Some people, in order to understand the need for help, have to endure real suffering.
Ignacio Iquino entered the history of Spanish cinema as a business-like professional of unpretentious commercial cinema. Rather a businessman than an artist, he worked in the genre that was in demand at this particular moment, not paying much attention to the creative component of his projects. The main thing for him was to recapture the money invested, and in what way - the second question. Therefore, the appeal of this businessman from cinema to acute social issues in the late Frankist period is very symptomatic and once again testifies to the amazing similarity of that time in Spain with the years of perestroika in the USSR, when public interest in years of silenced problems splashed out on the screens tons of so-called “porn and black”, under the sauce of research “ulcers” of society.
In 1973-74, Iquino made three films in a row about problems that suddenly interested Spanish society: prostitution and criminal abortion. He does this, owing to the censorship which still persists, very carefully, superficially, with morals necessarily read aloud, etc. However, if "Pulp Abortion" and "Girls for Rent" immediately came out on screens, "Les Miserables" had to wait several years until Franco's body rested in the family crypt, and any screen restrictions will not order long to live after the caudillo. By that time, the picture was already outdated, too smoothed and melodramatic to please the public, before which all the floodgates had opened, and therefore (oh, horror for Ikino!) had no special commercial success. And the producer-director himself, despite his rather venerable age, has already begun to develop a new vein promising quick profit, actively replenishing the rolling list of “classifacade S” with unpretentious sexual exploitation.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to call a completely failed film “Les Miserables” at least because Iquino gathered here a very decent acting company from the stars of Spanish cinema, albeit not of the first magnitude, but left a bright mark in history. First of all, of course, Analia Gade, who is alone responsible for the drama of the story told here (since Mr. Ikino himself admitted this same drama only with the prefix “melo-”). But the charismatic “villain” of westerns Eduardo Fajardo in an unexpectedly absolutely positive role, and Simon Andreu, who ate more than one dog in film exploitation, did not fail in the image of a small pimp director. As well as hara ctern Lali Soldevila, giving the tear-pressing plot a bit of comic.
With other female images, the situation is worse. The main “charity” Maria Jose performed by Sylvia Solar looks too “sugary” in her desire to save the lost souls of prostitutes. But here it is more to blame Ikino-screenwriter, who did not really spell out the story of the rebirth of the firefighter of life in a selfless “burcher” for the fate of “rejected” ladies of the half world. The dotted story of the death on her hands of an unfortunate prostitute, stabbed to death by her pimp, is somehow not enough for a radical transformation. Other “nocturnal butterflies”, beneficent visionary millionaire, perhaps, only fill the background with their forms and savory details of life.
However, one Lady Gade is enough to keep the nerve of the film at a decent level. And the scene of the beating of her heroine (Consuelo) by a villain pimp, unexpectedly hard-naturalistic for its time, generally becomes the central episode of the picture, forcing the viewer to experience catharsis and throw away condescending grunts at the next melodrama about “poor” prostitutes. From this "Les Miserables", of course, do not cease to remain the same melodrama - well, Ikino was not able to rise to real drama! Nevertheless, with all the annoying moralization, with a lot of not quite confidently brought together into one whole storylines: in addition to the story of Maria Jose and the story of Consuelo, there is still at least a couple of independent stories of unhappy women – the film turned out not to be the worst in the long and confusing filmography of the Spanish film businessman.