The Queen of Spain – first look review | Little White Lies

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The Queen of Spain – first look review

14 Feb 2017

Words by Adam Lee Davies

A woman with long dark hair wearing a gold-and-black corset-style top and a long black skirt, standing in a room with furnishings and a mirror.
A woman with long dark hair wearing a gold-and-black corset-style top and a long black skirt, standing in a room with furnishings and a mirror.
Pené­lope Cruz stars in this frol­ic­some love let­ter to Span­ish cinema’s gold­en age from direc­tor Fer­nan­do Trueba.

There’s cer­tain­ly some­thing for every­one in Fer­nan­do Trueba’s mad­cap love let­ter to Span­ish cinema’s gold­en 50s. There’s frothy back­stage melo­dra­ma, a larky caper, a gris­ly mur­der, com­e­dy anal rape, bru­tal maim­ing, anti-Fran­co fer­vour, a film-with­in-a-film, Pené­lope Cruz get­ting steamy with a shirt­less Kirk Dou­glas and Cary Elwes mug­ging it up in a dou­blet and hose to cap­ture that all-impor­tant Robin Hood: Men in Tights vibe. Does it all gel? No. Is it fun? Just about.

The shame­less­ly-mon­ick­ered Macare­na Grana­da (Cruz) returns home to the lov­ing embrace of Spain. Flush with Hol­ly­wood suc­cess, Tin­sel­town gos­sip and a goony mat­inée idol Amer­i­can hus­band (Elwes chan­nelling some sort of Andy Kauf­man cre­ation), she is to star in a big-bud­get film about the life of Queen Isabel­la. Also return­ing to Madrid is leg­endary direc­tor – and Macarena’s for­mer flame – Blas Fontiveros. He has not had such a good time of it.

Sent to one of Franco’s infa­mous intern­ment camps, he has long been con­sid­ered dead. Even­tu­al­ly return­ing to Spain he finds work on the pro­duc­tion, but is soon spot­ted by one of Franco’s inform­ers and sent to a work camp with a price on his head. The pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues, Macare­na choos­es a new lover, Elwes tests the patience and every­one flounces around in that par­tic­u­lar Span­ish way.

Then, about 90 min­utes in, it seems to dawn on True­ba that – amid all the soapy movieland fun – he’s rather for­got­ten about the plot, and so hasti­ly draws up a ludi­crous caper in which Cruz and co use the movie mag­ic at their dis­pos­al in order to res­cue Fontiveros. It arrives late, goes on far too long and is devoid of any wit, com­plex­i­ty or obsta­cle, but it is at least ener­getic and gives the final act of the film the kick in the back­side it sore­ly needs.

Though nev­er less than fun, The Queen of Spain nev­er finds a per­sua­sive tone. The enjoy­able flim-flam of the first half of the film proves to be large­ly incon­se­quen­tial. This means there’s too lit­tle time for the meat of the film – the caper itself – to be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly set up and staged. Like the tor­toise and the hare, it takes so long to get going that the end is one mad, unsuc­cess­ful dash.

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