Peppermint Frappé (1967) - HULU

You like it? Have another. Make it yourself.

I've been having a lot of indirect, supposedly "coincidental" run-ins with Generalissimo Francisco Franco as of late (who, contrary to some of the rumors you may have heard, is still dead.) The first one occurred a few weeks ago when I watched (and soon thereafter podcasted about) The Spirit of the Beehive, a Spanish film from 1973. It was released during the final years of the dictator's reign with the approval of his regime, in a desperate bid on the regime's part to reclaim an air of respectability after several decades of well-deserved pariah status among the more progressive European nations that surrounded the Iberian peninsula. One of that film's most significant themes was the decimated quality of life that Spaniards suffered in the years immediately following Franco's triumph in the Spanish Civil War. Many critics in the West regarded The Spirit of the Beehive to be a sidelong critique of Francoist repression and brutality, without coming right out and saying so, since that would have resulted in censorship of the movie at a minimum, and probably stronger consequences for any and all who dared give voice to more open dissent. From the perspective of outside observers, director Victor Erice's surface neutrality masked a pointed condemnation of Franco's culture of fear and repression, much like the practice of Soviet filmmakers in those same years who veiled their weary repudiation of brutal Communist Party practices by telling stories of brave insurgents who rebelled against the cruel tyrannies imposed by Nazis or other foreign invaders in Russia's storied past. (Here I'm specifically thinking of Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev.)

Though Franco's presence was felt more than it was overtly referenced in The Spirit of the Beehive, the face and name of El Caudillo ("The Leader") was impossible to miss for any viewer who was paying attention to the non-X-rated segments of I Am Curious (Yellow), reviewed in this spot just a week ago. Vilgot Sjoman's high-grossing, censorship-busting art house sensation did have a few political and sociological points to make, in between the scenes where the lead couple ditched their clothing and romped about the screen rather unsexily over the latter half of the film. One of those punctuation marks involved Franco's official portrait, a reproduction of which was affixed to Lena's bedroom wall, mixed in with pictures of starving children, concentration camp survivors and other commonplace atrocities of the mid-20th century. The curious Swedish dissidents (Sjoman and Lena) each seemed to have a particular bone to pick with Franco, as they both took shots at not only the society he led, but also the complacent Swedes who ignored his human rights abuses and took their pleasant summer holidays on the sun-drenched shores of Spain's Mediterranean coast without as much as a flutter of guilt or remorse to trouble their consumerist conscience.

Franco references in two consecutive films can be seen as a meaningless coincidence, but his shadow lurking over a third movie in a row establishes a pattern. And that's exactly where I'm at following my viewing of Peppermint Frappé, the 1967 feature directed by Carlos Saura that came up next on my timeline. Released in Spain six years prior to Erice's award-winning masterpiece, Peppermint Frappé plays on the surface like a droll hybrid of Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Definitely a bit left of the mainstream, regardless of any cultural sensitivities, but nothing so brazenly defiant of the political that might be construed as a daring taunt of Franco and his allies to their faces. But it doesn't take much reading up on the film before those encoded allusions and allegories are cited by commentators more knowledgeable about both the film and Spanish history than I am.

For those who haven't heard of Peppermint Frappé, and might be wondering how it found its way into my queue, I watched it over the weekend on Hulu, where it's been available on the Criterion channel for the past few years. The title (same in Spanish and in English) derives from a beverage consumed with frequency throughout the film, basically looking like creme de menthe over crushed ice, which seems much too syrupy for my tastes, but apparently went down smooth enough to encourage refills. (See the quote at the top of this post.)

But that notion of liking something enough to want to make and slurp up another one right away also applies to the obsession that drives the film's protagonist Julian into a spiral of increasingly voyeuristic and disturbing behaviors. After an unexpected run-in with Pablo, an old childhood pal who recently returned from Africa to his rustic Spanish hometown, the self-composed, impeccably respectable Julian finds himself fixated upon Elena, Pablo's beautiful and much younger new wife. His first glance at her stirs an intensely star-struck but barely contained emotional response, the sound of pounding martial drums filling the soundtrack. Is it his heartbeat? Is he overcome with a long-latent but newly resurgent passionate desire for this gorgeous woman gazing at him on the staircase landing? As it turns out, the drums are a flashback to a time and place, a traditional Good Friday street festival where he and she once met, at least in Julian's imagination. Elena claims to have no memory of such an encounter, or even of being in the town or circumstances he describes, but he's insistent about it, brushing away her denials as if they're nothing more than a coquettish game she's playing.

And she does seem to enjoy dabbling in such flirtations, making it known early on in their one-on-one chats on the side that even though she's content to be married to Pablo for now, she's open to the idea that "things happen," the kind of anything-goes come on that spurs on men like Julian to act against their more prudent calculations in favor of impulses that offer more immediate gratification. Julian embarks on a mission of seduction that produces just enough tantalization to keep him engaged in the pursuit, but he continues to run into one roadblock after another, often but not always set in place by Elena herself, who seems to enjoy watching her pursuer scramble in and out of position to pounce on that elusive moment of advantage.

Eventually, Julian's frustration level mounts to the point where he needs to figure out a Plan B, and that's when his devious eyes land upon Ana, a modest and plain young nursing assistant who just happens to bear more than a passing resemblance to Elena. (And no wonder, since both women are played by Geraldine Chaplin, the daughter of Charles and his fourth and final wife Oona - she certainly inherited his famously sweet, endearing smile.) Not content to merely woo his shy but pliable employee (that would be too easy, and one gets the sense that he'd consider such a conquest unworthy of his time and effort), Julian adds an extra level of challenge: his goal is to remake Ana into the image of Elena, to a level of precise detail that veers into deeply unsettling territory as he swabs samples of Elena's make-up and other personal grooming supplies in order to create a thoroughly convincing but nevertheless illusory replica of his best friend's wife. Yes, Julian is a world class creeper, and we soon discover that there's no limit that he won't violate in order to bring his vision to fruition.

That lust for counterfeit pleasures, the self-deluding hypocrisy that assumes others can't see through the preening vanity, the repression of more natural and emotionally reciprocal desires, the petty envy of prestige and possessions that rightly belong to others, and the outrageous lengths to which the egomaniac Julian will go as he chases his prey are the elements that link this heady blend of satire and surrealism to life under Franco's rule in the late 1960s. As is often the case when artists are compelled to craft their protests at glancing angles to avoid official reprimands, the imposed generality has a positive effect of making the jabs more universal in their application. So I don't think that it's all that necessary to study up on the legacy of Franco or post-Civil War Spain in order to enjoy Peppermint Frappé, though it surely can't hurt. A little background knowledge of Bunuel (to whom the film is dedicated at the end) and Hitchcock will definitely enhance the experience though, putting Saura's audaciously swirling 360 camera moves and the gentlemanly depravity of his main character in a nicely tailored, custom fitted historical and cinematic context.

Next: Le Samouraï