Encarna Paso
In the fantastic world of the "bosque animado" meet some people who have been transported to this place by a magic force. Now their histories cross one another.
Cesar and Isabel just got married for the Jewish rite, their religion. He is a director of a banking company. She works in a bookstore owned by her mother-in-law. The couple sees their happiness truncated when César discovers financial anomalies in the entity where he works. What were initially charges against some managers, becomes an accusation of embezzlement against César, who is in France to prevent his entry into military service. Go back and appear before the judge to prove his innocence.
Director José Luis Garci has turned his camera inward on filmmakers and screenwriters to portray them as so self-absorbed in the creative process that there is no other world, no other human relationship that can compete. As José (Adolfo Marsillach) and Federico (Jesus Puente) work together on a new screenplay, their interactions with their family (José's teen daughters, Federico's wife) disappear under the all-consuming task of creation. The daughters give up and go off on their own, and the wife joins a convent while Federico barely notices. And when the producer is interrupted by profound grief at the sudden death of his older son, he almost automatically returns to thinking about the film project when the funeral has ended. Garci honors many great directors at the beginning of this film, and the film continues to play out as an elaboration on this homage -- an illustration both of the dedication and the cost of filmmaking, no judgments given.
As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.
Juan is the handsome, irresponsible, best-loved second son. When his older brother, who runs the family's black-market business with their steel-willed mother, marries Juan's lover Ana, Juan heads for Madrid to work for Franco. Juan also leaves behind his impoverished cousin, Ángela, pregnant with his son. Jump ten years. Juanito, the lad, has rheumatic fever. The doctor says to pamper the boy. Ángela, Ana, and his grandmother comply. As Juanito recovers, his father returns in desperate need of cash; Juanito witnesses a theft blamed on his innocent mother. Things come to a head at a saint's-name party for father and son. Jealousies, betrayals, and a bullet converge.
Toni is a seventeen year old young man who comes to Madrid from a little village in search of work. A friend from the same village of Toni puts him in touch with Charo, "La Corea", a mature woman dedicated to facilitating contacts and boys to American men at the military base of Torrejón.
Cecilio Rubes, a businessman engaged in the manufacture of baths and toilets, tries to remain neutral in the imminent Spanish civil war. But the attitude of Cécil, his only child, a spoiled boy who grows without respect their parents, will forced him to face the cruel reality of the facts. Jumping back and forth in time, we are shown his present and his past through his wife Adela and Paulina, the mistress of father and son.
When the single middle-aged Luis travels from Barcelona to bury the remains of his mother in the vault of his family in Segovia, he is lodged by his aunt Pilar in her old house where he spent his summer of 1936 with her. He meets his cousin Angelica, who was his first love, living on the first floor with her husband and daughter, and he recalls his childhood in times of the Spanish Civil War entwined with the present.
In full tourist season in Torremolinos, three crooks steal tourists in order to support their families. But however they are presented with the opportunity to make a big hit and will try to do it, not without many problems.
A housewife is frequently left alone by her husband in their apartment, as his business requires him to travel. The woman who lives upstairs is also minus her husband, but Sevilla begins to catch occasional lies and half-truths from her upstairs neighbor, which leads Sevilla to think that Shepard has murdered her husband. Sevilla can't quite keep her mouth shut about the matter, however, and despite the fact that her friends think her imagination is running wild, she does not really begin to suspect the danger until it is too late
Evelino Galindo, the serious owner of a porcelain store, argues with the womanizer jeweler Orcajo for an insignificant game of dominoes. Evelino, enraged, challenges him the next day to a duel in the gym. But after meditating a bit he starts to get scared. That is why, with the help of his friend Leoncio, he sharpens his wit to find a way to escape from combat. However, the situation is becoming more complicated.
