Miguel Picazo
Lara, the host of a radio call-in show dealing in psychic phenomena, discovers that her estranged lover has been found dead in a small Spanish village. She learns that he was conducting secret experiments searching for tortured souls trapped behind the energy of the living world.
July 18, 1902. A woman and her daughter are brutally murdered in the Extremaduran town of Don Benito. Everybody knows the depraved town boss was responsible, but nobody dares to declare against him.
This 1985 Spanish film reveals one of the many terrible aspects of 16th century Spain, still plagued by the radical Christian Inquisition, one of a plethora of difficulties Spaniards faced at the time. Spanish super star Carmen Maura plays a nun who agrees to a selfless scam, a fake stigmata, only to avoid separation from her lover, another nun. It's a serious and passionate work, highlighting the theme of outspoken women-against-repression, seen in other good gay and lesbian films. This is not a lesbian "Nun sense" or another "Dark Habits" (by Almodovar, which also starred Carmen Maura, and also set in a Spanish convent, with some lesbian nuns). Perhaps, best of all, 'Extramuros' is realistic and frank. It isn't shy about its characters' sexuality. Their sexuality, and the film as a whole are genuine.
The story is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator, who recounts the events of a particular night at a Villa Santa Rita bar and brothel. The clientele, including the narrator, spend the evening drinking and dancing the tango. Their festivities are interrupted by the arrival of a formidable stranger in black.
A morbid curiosity leads Andrea and her friends to spy on a couple of young people during their amorous outings. Javi, the boyfriend, feels bothered because that situation, but ignores that Andrea is attracted to him.
In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Ana, a sensitive seven-year-old girl in a rural Spanish hamlet is traumatized after a traveling projectionist screens a print of James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein" for the village. The youngster is profoundly disturbed by the scenes in which the monster murders the little girl and is later killed himself by the villagers. She questions her sister about the profundities of life and death and believes her older sibling when she tells her that the monster is not dead, but exists as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn. When a Loyalist soldier, a fugitive from Franco's victorious army, hides out in the barn, Ana crosses from reality into a fantasy world of her own.
Isabel returns to Spain, after several years of absence, to be cured of a neurosis. His daughter Ana, whom he has not seen in all this time, decides to spend the holidays with her, taking advantage of the fact that her boyfriend has gone to study in Germany. During her stay in the sanatorium, Ana meets Mario, an attractive young man somewhat unbalanced, who tries to seduce her. Although at first she does not show any interest, little by little she becomes attracted to him.
When, in a very strict Catholic school, a teacher enters a bathroom and surprises two students engaged in forbidden sexual practices, some of their classmates do not know whether to remain silent or rat out their own friends when questioned by school authorities.
Ramiro, a bank clerk and father of two young children, has been left, after his wife's death, in the care of Tula, his sister-in-law. From the novel by Miguel de Unamuno, Miguel Picazo (" Dark dreams of August ") premieres as director with this portrait of one of those small provincial cities where nothing ever happens.
