Horacio Valcárcel
Revolution in Spain, around the events of 2 May 1808, when the people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation.
After the Spanish Civil War breaks out, the Prado Museum is being evacuated. One of the guards finds a painting by the master, Goya, and takes it to prevent damage to the work of art. In the interim, he meets a young lady with whom he falls in love. Assisted by her and her family members, the soldier attempts to save Goya's masterpiece intact amidst the war and violence.
After his son dies, an elderly man comes back to Spain from the US and hopes to find out which of his granddaughters is true, and which one is bastard.
Pepe Soriano plays a Madrid shopkeeper who is kidnapped by henchmen of Franco in this political comedy. After his kidnapping, he is forced to become the dictator's double for many official ceremonies. Due to his long and unexplained absence, Pepe's wife believes her husband has been abducted and killed, so she tries to reach her husband through spiritualism. After Pepe surprises her with a nocturnal visit, he tells her he will touch his ear to signal it is he and not Franco in public appearances.
A 50-year-old playwright (Jesus Puente) bemoans his fate from his secluded home in Northern Spain in this depressing drama. Side plots include an actress and former acquaintance who comes to visit and his amorous diversions with a 20-year-old local woman.
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.
Private detective Germán “el Piojo” Areta investigates the life of a gay man who has apparently abandoned his partner. When they both turn up dead, it seems one killed the other before committing suicide, but Areta is not convinced.
A boy of fourteen enters to work as messenger boy in a flower shop. His first task is to bring a bouquet for a bride but arrives late and is forced to go to the altar. His second job is to bring a funeral wreath but uses it to save a man who is drowning in the river. Naturally, he is late again. In the afternoon, he carries a basket of flowers to the TV a Spanish movie star is performing. But he is wrong and takes another funeral wreath that is delivered to star in a big stage. Due to customer complaints he is fired and the store puts back the sign "boy is needed."
