Luis Bunuel's final film, made in 1977, this is really a terrific film, a good narrative offset, played with, and framed within the Bunuelean landscape of fetish and artifice.
Again, we have the traditional filming methods. The interesting framing device of the train also adds a certain postmodern interest, we wonder from then on about perspective. Why are we seeing the film from this angle? Is it sexist.
We make the embarrasing admission that, until alerted to the fact after the film, we didn't notice the lead female was played by two actors. This shows the success of the move; we have a genuine doubling of personality, but through the frame of the man who trya to pull all together we have a wonderful sense of fakery, of the very art of film that tries to connect the unconnected.
The story is an interesting meditation, often very entertaining (and marvellously acted) on what we desire, why we want it. Mystery is succesfully created through the almost noir-ish following of one character.
The final scenes are terrific, the sewing, the bombs. The terrorist, deadpanned sublots hints at something throughout nicely, perhaps it could be a little over obvious but it isn't thrust in the face too much.
It is too easy to read this film, which couldn't have been known to be Bunuel's last, as some kind of summary of his career, but it is tempting. The last shot is magnificent, powerful, nearly funny in its prescience.
A good tale of interesting themes, well told with Bunuel's distinctive style. He still had it.
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