A part-innocent, part-crass homage to the work of Spanish playwright and humorist Miguel Mihura, Jose Luis Garci’s “Ninette” reps an unexpected foray into straight comedy from a helmer best known for lush period mellers. All the Garci hallmarks are in place — fine perfs from his longstanding thesping team, first-class production values and an absence of anything remotely contempo — but the big difference in this deft but fusty tale of a backwoods Spaniard translated to gay Paree in the 1950s is in the high number of chuckles. Garci devotees and nostalgia buffs will enjoy, with limited offshore play a possibility.
Andres (Carlos Hipolito), owner of a small-town store selling religious icons, heads to Paris to meet with old buddy Armando (Enrique Villen), whose life is far from being the exciting affair Andres had imagined. Installed in a boarding house run by Republican exiles Pierre (Fernando Delgado) and wife Bernarda (Beatriz Carvajal), Andres’ aim is to sample the delights of nighttime Paris. But soon he’s being seduced by the flirtatious Ninette (Elsa Pataky), Pierre’s apparently libertarian blonde bombshell daughter, and has to start inventing excuses about why he never leaves the apartment. Much humor is extracted from placing carefree French attitudes in opposition to those of Francoist Spain.
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Most of the first section, as per the original, is set in a single room, meaning things are satisfyingly claustrophobic. But after Ninette apparently gets pregnant and Andres returns to Spain, taking everyone with him, the pleasantly controlled farce start to unravel.
Characters are all walking cliches, but thesps enter into the spirit gloriously, the exotropic Villen and the lugubrious Delgado delivering the comic high points in generally nimble ensemble work that features some genuinely hilarious dialogue. The camera-friendly Pataky is fine as Ninette, but the camera is too obviously in love with her, and she disrobes far beyond the call of duty, tipping the pic over into cheesy voyeurism. Hipolito is present through most scenes, and is rightly careful to keep himself rooted in reality.
Though no doubt progressive at the time of writing, much of the humor is dated — including heavy-handed satire of the fanaticism of Spain’s Republicans, gags about the moral awkwardness of 1950s Spaniards in a morally changed world, and lingerie refs aplenty (after all, this is Paris).
Garci is Spanish cinema’s supreme nostalgist, so pic actually looks and feels as though it were made 40 years ago, right down to the sprightly soundtrack and the over-applied fades to black. Lenser Raul Perez Cubero has imbued most scenes with a slight sepia tint to enhance the time-travel effect.
As always with Garci, set design, courtesy of Gil Parrondo, is superb down to the last detail, continually tempting the eye away from the main action.
