Tristana

Good thing, too, because the film can get strange and elusive even on a surface level, following two complex characters whose motives and actions are not too easily grasped. Based on a novel by Benito Pérez Galdós—whose Nazarin Buñuel adapted in Mexico more than a decade earlier—Tristana stars a perfectly cold, ravishing Catherine Deneuve as a virginal young woman who goes off to live with aging aristocrat Fernando Rey after her mother dies. Considered a wise, upstanding gentleman in the community, Rey preys on Deneuve behind closed doors, eventually coercing her into his bed, but his alternating roles as father and husband—whatever suits his purposes—foment hostility and rebellion. Deneuve finds a way out when she runs off with a young artist (Franco Nero), but when a tumor develops in her leg, requiring amputation, she returns again to Rey with revenge on her mind.

Though freighted with symbolic value—for the socialist principles he doesn’t apply to himself or for the image of a wise and courtly gentleman that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny—Rey isn’t so easily reduced to a monster, nor is Deneuve entirely the righteous victim. They’re more complicated characters, with deep flaws and perversions, and Buñuel’s taste for provocation doesn’t rely on turning them into reducible types. For a film so simply plotted, Tristana is thick with mystery and meaning, as difficult to decipher as a recurring dream that has Rey’s severed head serving as a bell clapper. Is it a nightmare? A fantasy? Both? Buñuel seems happy to leave viewers scratching their heads.

Key features: An impressive assortment of special features, with a liner-notes essay by Richard Porton, an excerpt from Raymond Durgnat’s 1977 Buñuel biography, a commentary-track discussion between Deneuve and critic Kent Jones, and an alternate ending that isn’t nearly as good as the one that made the cut.

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