Rosendo Juarez (TV), 1990

Director: Gerardo Vera

Screenplay: Gerardo Vera and Fernando Fernan Gomez

Other Actors: Pastora Vega, Fernando Guillen, Maria Asquerino, Miguel Molina

This rare film, based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, once again showcases Antonio’s expressive face, and his power to convey the emotions of a scene without words. It formed part of a series for TVE depicting six stories by Borges. Antonio remembers the subject of his portrayal, Rosendo, as follows: “A serious character, stern, an epic man, that spoke little and did much. He was almost a mythological being and unreal.”

The movie begins with a writer who enters a public house. Before ordering a cup of coffee, a middle-aged man (Antonio in the role of Rosendo) appears before him and offers to clean his shoes. The man tells the writer that he has heard about him and has read his novel about the legend of Rosendo Juarez, but that he cannot agree with the idea of the novel. He tells the writer that HE is Rosendo and proceeds to relate the true story of his life.

The action takes place in a small village. The young Rosendo lives in a poorhouse with his mother. He does not know who his father is. His mother works incessantly; she washes and irons clothes to make ends meet. Their life is very poor and difficult. Thus we gradually reach the moment when we see Rosendo, now a grown man. One day he promises his mother he will find himself a job. He puts on his best clothes (which isn’t saying much) and goes to the local bar. He gets into a brief quarrel with a drunkard who challenges him to a fight. They go outside, and Rosendo kills the drunkard in self-defense. He re-enters the bar and everyone understands what happened. During the night, the police break into Rosendo’s home and arrest him, dragging him away as his mother screams. He spends a week in jail and is threatened with 24 years in jail. The only way to avoid prison is to agree to work for Don Nicolas Paredes, a prominent leader and politician. The Don controls a gang of mercenaries who take the law into their own hands against his enemies.

Rosendo begins to earn good money, but turns into a brutal, cold and unscrupulous murderer. Gradually, his “fame” becomes known – killings, assaults, bloody dispersals of strikers. Everyone is afraid of him, and the police do not dare touch him. He visits the bar often, and it is only a barmaid who has the courage to tell him how much he has changed

One day in the bar Rosendo notices a woman who does not belong to the local people. Having decided to win her, he drives away her companion and triumphs. There is one brief love scene in the movie. Thus, the life of Rosendo goes on among the bar, his scandals and his woman. She is the only human to whom he shows any kindness. One night a stranger takes liberties with the woman, much to Rosendo’s displeasure. Rosendo calls him outside and kills him. It becomes clear that the man was the son of a certain deputy. Rosendo has trouble with the Don for killing him. But eventually everything is covered and he is not arrested.

Shortly thereafter, Rosendo learns that his mother has died. At the funeral, he meets an old friend. His mother’s death and seeing his old friend cause Rosendo to reflect on the turn his life has taken.

Not long after the funeral, yet another man approaches him in the bar, although he well knows Rosendo’s reputation. He insults both Rosendo and the woman, but Rosendo refuses to fight. The woman, however, insists that Rosendo kill the man and even attacks him herself. Rosendo stops her, pushes her away, and tells the man that he may spread the word that Rosendo Juarez has been ridiculed by him, after which he leaves the bar and the woman, never to return.

The end of the story once again finds us in the public house with the writer and an older Rosendo. The writer has written down everything Rosendo told him. It was not that he was afraid of the drunkard, Rosendo tells him, but that he had simply seen his own image in the man, as though he were looking in a mirror, and did not like what he saw. The man puts his head down again, and when he looks up to ask another question, Rosendo has disappeared.

[Note: Since the only copy we’ve been able to find is in Spanish with Bulgarian subtitles, Galia generously provided us with the above plot line].

Related Information

One of his co-stars, Pastora Vega, had this to say about Antonio’s work in the piece: “I am enchanted by working with Antonio. He makes a very risky work, very powerful. To be a companion to his work fascinates me because he is stimulating, because of his good humor and the happiness in the filming. He has a tremendous generosity with me, since there were scenes that I had to enter in a complicated emotion and Antonio didn’t have any problem in helping me. He was permanently searching for things…I walked around always thinking of the scenes and he helped a lot because it drags. He is a source of giving and for a director, he is a marvel, because he’s offering eighty thousand options.”

The director, Gerardo Vera, quickly saw Antonio’s possibilities: “He was the possessor of all types of contradictions. He had a big dose of ambition, since without it one could not arrive where he had arrived. He was an actor with depth, serious that he searched in his most innermost, in his personal experiences and contradictions, in order to create a character. For me, Banderas is an Equilibrist because in his search he is placed on the border of the abyss. Daring to investigate it, being as he is, he takes a risk. He searches from within with honesty and, at the same time, he picks up information from the ones around him. He takes a mess and then leaves it in a pure stylization. Whatever it takes, he does in order to be a character. And when he has taken possession of it, he acts as if he before had an unguarded objective.”

If you would like to read a translation of the original short story by Borges, click here.

Film Synopsis by Lisa