Additional Captures

Writer and Director: Rafa Moleon

Other Actors: Jorge Sanz, Victoria Abril

Antonio has a small part in this film where actors play multiple roles. Franco has just won the Civil War and Antonio portrays a republican soldier who is forced to live hidden in a basement.

The movie contains very explicit sex scenes... but few involving Antonio for a change.

From Paulo in Spain:
I don't know if this is useful, but I found it in a back issue of Newsday.
Apparently Si te dicen que caí (1989) (If they tell you I fell) was released also as Aventis.

Elusive Truth After Franco
By John Anderson. STAFF WRITER

* * * (THREE STARS) AVENTIS. (U) Vincente Aranda uses the memories of Franco's Spain to weave a disturbing web of passion and cruelty. With Victoria Abril, Jorge Sanz, Antonio Banderas. From the novel by Juan Marse. Directed by Vincente Aranda. First film in the Joseph Papp Public Theater's series "Spanish Eyes: Visions from Post-Franco Spain, 1975-90," at the Public, 425 Lafayette St., Manhattan.

AS AMBITIOUS as it is troubling, and as confusing as it is literate, Vincente Aranda's "Aventis" is a port-mortem not only of Franco's Spain, but of the corpse of memory. Appropriately enough, it begins in an autopsy room, where the body of Java (Jorge Sanz) and that of a young woman have been delivered one morning. Cause of death? It doesn't matter, nor is there any guarantee of the truth. Fact, Aranda tells us over and over again, is perception, and perception is an amorphous entity that adapts itself to time and circumstance. What, after all, was the truth of Franco's Spain? That is where "Aventis" spends its time, either in 1970, when Java turns up dead; or 1936, when his brother Marcos (Antonio Banderas) is fighting the civil war or having sex with Aurora Nin (Victoria Abril) while they are watched by the degenerate Conrado (Javier Gurruchaga). Mostly, the film focuses on 1940, a time when the victorious Franco was collaborating with Hitler, many of the Spanish people were fugitive, maimed or imprisoned, and the often fatherless children spent their time telling aventis, or stories with no beginning or end, or even a purpose other than providing a outlet for the pent-up horror and perversity created by the war and its aftermath.

Like the aventis themselves, "Aventis" is a rolling stream of subconsciousness, in which the storyteller and the story become indistinguishable. The stories begin with the hospital worker who recognizes Java, and then outrages his co-worker, a nun, with tales of the children, who then regale each other with Java's sexual adventures with a prostitute (also Abril), who perform for the voyeuristic pleasure of the same Conrado. To detail the circular motions of the plot would not only be useless, but a contradiction of the director's purpose; Aranda's convolutes his plot lines to emphasize just how subjective truth is.

The same faces show up repeatedly, if not as the same characters. For instance, Abril, Aranda's fetish-actress and the star of his recent hit "Lovers," plays a double, perhaps a triple role, as Aurora, and Menchu, the Red Whore. Or is Aurora the Red Whore? Throughout the film, Aranda orchestrates his subplots and characters into a symphony of discordant emotion and visual illusion.

Copyright 1992, Newsday Inc.

John Anderson, Elusive Truth After Franco., Newsday, 11-13-1992, pp 85.

Related Information

This is Antonio's second film with Victoria Abril.

Antonio could film only on Mondays, his day off from the theater, where he was appearing for the second time in the revival of Edward II. For more information about Antonio in Edward II, see Los Zancos.

English Films

Spanish Films