Analysis
El Amante Bilingüe is a ruthless and ferocious satire on the Catalonia linguistic policies, exacerbated by social and class differences. The film is a painful reflection on the human desire to be another person.
The film is clearly marked by its geographical context. The normalization of the Catalan language and the reestablishment of Catalan as a strong national identity in the context of Spain as a nation. Despite its support from the government of Catalonia, the films frames catalinazation comically, associating popular Catalan culture with racism- anti immigrant sentiment, and the rescue of self identity excluding others. The film portrays Norma, the woman who is the intellectual driven force behind the Catalonian government policies of linguistic change, as a spoiled, sexually obsessive, cold snob. While Juan Marés disfiguration marked his alignment with the culture most associated with his perfidious wife with whom he wants to get back sexually once more.
The film does not escape the overblown qualities, thin characterization, and inherent simplistic sexual politics of the novel. However, it skillfully points out the layer construction of a second identity, Juan Faneca. The man with the black cloak, wide brimmed hat, wounded scalp and eye patch stand for some of the grotesqueness of a masculine self-image nonstructural notion of sexual predominance and based on outmoded forms of seduction.
What started as a grotesque and unbelievable adventure gradually develops into an ironic criticism of the dual, social and linguistic policies of Catalonia. The film is a dark reflection about personal identity. Aranda’s ability to make the viewer feel like an "other" while treating the same topic in his film is a work of mastery
Vicente Aranda became well known as a film director skillful in handling erotic scenes. In El Amante Bilingüe, the director self parodies his famous erotic screen scenes, in a take in which Faneca and Norma end up turning and levitating as expression of sexual ecstasy.
Read more about this topic: The Bilingual Lover
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