an analysis
of the concreteness of concrete reality
by Douglas Messerli
Eloy de la Iglesia and Gonzalo
Goicoechea (screenplay, based on a story by them), Eloy de la Iglesia
(director) El diputado (The Deputy) / 1978
We like to imagine that on November
20, 1975 (Franco actually died on the 19th, and his death had been rumored time
and again previously), with the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco that
Spain finally woke up to celebrate freedom from the dictatorial rule that began
in 1936 to discover new liberation and governmental order. In fact, the
transition was a fractious, difficult, and bitter one as this film helps to
recount, with forces of fascism continuing to work against the new political
coalitions arising under the supposedly benign rule of Juan Carlos I.
Eloy de la Iglesia had long explored issues of homosexuality in
variously coded ways in his other films, but in the 1978 masterwork El
diputado (The Deputy) he brought together his long-time focus on
LGBTQ sexuality with politics, blackmail, murder, and a treatise on moral
integrity that still seems significant today in a world that seemingly still
cannot fully rectify the personal world of sexuality with the very public world
of the political and social arena.
Roberto Orbea (José Sacristán) is a
lawyer who has long fought for unpopular causes including representing Spanish
terrorists against the Franco government. But he has also long been a
clandestine member of the Spanish underground Communist-Socialist coalitions,
using his hidden apartment as a meeting place, printing room, and general
headquarters for the underground politicos. With his quiet and intense
intelligence, not to ignore his rather bedraggled, hound dog physical
appearance, Orbea is moving up in the party and upon the death of Franco is a
natural candidate for a Spanish “deputy,” what the US describe as a
congressional representative. He, among others was arrested and imprisoned by
the last remnants of the fascist government and he has more than shown his
commitment to party matters.
There is, however, one very major problem. From the very beginning of
this film, Orbea describes how as a young military man he had found himself
attracted to other men, and begun exploring his sexuality in the barracks and
soon after, in public bathroom facilities, back rooms, and elsewhere. Yet when
he met his current wife Carmen (María Luisa San José)—the actor herself so
beautiful and seemingly intelligent that, as Walter Goodman of The New York
Times put it, she might “stir the heterosexual in most men”—Orbea discovers
that he is, in fact, bisexual and appears for several years to have been
“cured” from his previous “abnormalities.” But obviously he is still attracted
to boys as he discovers in his stint in prison, as he becomes almost desperate
for sex with a fellow sick-bay prisoner, Nes (Ángel Pardo), arrested for male
prostitution.
In the early scenes of this film, Orbea comes under the thrall of Nes,
which doesn’t end when he is freed, the prostitute using his connections to
supply the lawyer / up-and-coming politician with what B. Rudy Rich in The
Village Voice aptly described as “a revolving [car] passenger seat of
jail-bait.”
Being a man of principle, Orbea has revealed his new-found tendencies to
Carmen, and she knew of his previous homosexual experiences when she married
him. But she is a strong party member herself and realizes how important her
husband is in the politics of the day, so she agrees to go along, dealing wise
and providently with the things they do still share with one another, including
their deep commitment to one another, an aspect of love that may prove more
important than the sexual. Moreover, Carmen is still desperately in love with
Roberto, and is willing to fight for him in her own way.
By the time the movie has begun, however, we realize that in some way
all they plans have gone amiss, as Orbea reports that he expects the police to
arrest him at any moment, while still debating how to reveal his sexual
indiscretions—we do not yet recognize the seriousness of them—to his colleagues
and those who are about to elect him, so we eventually discover, to head his
party.
From there the movie takes us back to Orbea’s jail time and through his
early one-night stands with boys, as I have reported. But the vast majority of
the film focuses on his growing love for just one underage boy, Juanito (José
Luis Alonso) to whom Nes has introduced him. So fond does he become of Juanito
that he suggests to his wife that they rent out their old underground
apartment, meanwhile planning to use it as a regular getaway for his affairs
with Juanito.
The two go camping together—during which de la Iglesia satirizes the
social commitment of men like Orbea, as we see Roberto attempting to read Marx
to the boy who is fast falling asleep—and share in constant sexual meetings
when Orbea is not too busy with his political meetings. Even his wife gets in
on the act, showing up one night at the apartment and meeting Juanito about to
have sex with her husband. Juanito runs off in embarrassment.
But Carmen, like the good leftist supporter she is, takes it further,
becoming a kind of mother to Juanito as she takes him with her husband to
museums and introduces him as a sort of foster son to her friends. At one
point, as the three smoke Afghan hashish (“the real stuff” as Juanito describes
it) she herself seeks out sexual contact with the boy with, finally, Roberto
joining in.
These scenes suggesting that in a truly utopian world such sexual
desires might be transformed into a kind of kinky sexual fantasy weaken an
otherwise complex and troubling movie. As Rich summarized the problem in her
1986 review, when the film was finally shown in the US: “The film’s real
problem is a classical philosophical dilemma; how to make utopian visions
either credible or desirable. De la Iglesia can represent Robert’s desires in
the context of the demimonde (a bordello of available pleasures, a kinky
party…) but utterly fails once he has moved from the sordid to the sublime, to
hold on to sexuality at all. Instead, the atmosphere of the family takes over,
and Juanito (Carmen and Roberto’s beloved, the hustler with a heart of gold)
changes before our eyes from a delinquent into a son.”
Arguably, that is what many pedophilic relationships are really about,
an issue brought to mind with my recent viewing from the same decade of Gérard
Blain’s Les Amis (1971); but it takes us away from the serious
contemplations of de la Iglesia’s film and confuses the real issue of gay
sexuality, turning it into something like a mid-life crisis.
For despite these bourgeoise variations of the male hustler and customer
relationship—issues which, oddly, the well-educated and middle-class Marxist
never quite comprehends—Nes and his beloved Juanito have been bought at a
higher price by the fascists who attempt to use the cute kid as a route to
destroy not only Orbea’s political ambitions but the reputation of the party he
is elected to head. While Orbea and his wife enjoy their sexual rhapsody, the
rightists have been carefully photographing the little “family’s” every public
move and plan to install cameras in the apartment with Juanito’s help.
Presumably, given their love and
educating good will, Juanito is converted both politically and morally and
finally reveals their intentions to both Roberto and Carmen. But it is already
too late. With the photographs, the fascists no longer need to make a kind of
revelatory “porno film.” Using the boy as seeming bait, they kidnap Juanito and
send Nes to tell Orbea that if he does not show up at the apartment with two
hours they will kill the kid.
Orbea finally realizes his game is up.
He has once before insisted to Carmen that he should resign, preferring to
embrace his sexual nature than lie for the rest of his life to gain political
power. He is not about power, but integrity and continues only as long as he
can still achieve some of his aims. But finally, in a moral summary that will
strike some as facile, but moved me with its honesty, Orbea explains why he
cannot leave the boy to die.
Carmen insists that it is not just prestige but the party’s that is at
stake, reminding him that they did not elect him for the head of the party as a
homosexual. But Orbea now sees it all clearly and in a long monologue sums up
his future:
“I am being used by both extremes. But at
least I can the satisfaction of seeing it out to the end. Living up to my
contradictions. As you know, I always wanted to make history and now I’m going
to be a victim of it. …It’s very simple. In a few years the people will say,
‘Oh yes, Roberto Orbea. That faggot who wanted to be a politician. What a jerk.
An irresponsible ass.’ You’ll leave…sick and tired of this mess. Having
sacrificed the best years of your life for nothing…or practically nothing. To
have received…nothing but the love and appreciation of a failure. Juanito will
also leave…hoping to find someone younger. Or some woman he can fool and be
happy. Oh, and be normal! That’s what it’s all about. And I might end up being
one of those old dirty men who hang around public lavatories. Who write and
bathroom doors and sit at the very last row of certain theaters. …Of course, I
can always go back to my theories. An analysis of the concreteness of concrete
reality. And who knows. I might discover that it’s the best way to make
history. Suffering. Let the others have the power. Those who don’t mind giving
in and covering up to get ahead. But not me. I’m tired of giving in and
covering up.”
He arrives at the apartment, however, only to discover the fascists
facing him with guns, having already beaten and killed the boy. No, they assure
him, they need not kill Orbea. How will he explain the body of a boy such as
Juanito in his bed?
Orbea’s voice, which has been narrating his tale from time to time since
the first frames of the film, tells us that he spends the night holding the
dead boy in his arms and, after calling Carmen to explain what happened, before
going to meet his fate at the meeting of the congress, hoping to tell them the
truth.
As he enters the chamber the crowds stand and applaud for a long a
while, continuing on without permitting him a word. It is clear that he has
been elected. A single tear rolls from his eye down his check as the film
announces “Fin.”
Most critics have suggested that it is inevitable from the first frames
that he would be arrested. So presumably the tear he sheds regards the fact
that he has no future, the applause he is now receiving becoming momentarily
meaningless. As Paul Attanasio of the Washington Post presumes: “We know
from the beginning that Roberto will be arrested (the movie is a kind of long
flashback), so the only interest lies in how he gets to that point….”
There is, of course, no answer to our question of what “point” actually
is. The film hints at possibilities, even leads us to imagine, as Attanasio
argues, his being arrested for the act—his major fear all along—without his
being ever able to fully explain himself. Indeed what could he possibly say to
exculpate himself from the situation? His imaginary “confession” is truly
meaningless to those who have not lived his life—or seen this movie.
But since all possibilities at film’s end remain, let me project an
alternative reading. Since clearly the cheering congress has not yet heard, as
he long ago feared, of the boy’s death, just perhaps the intelligent, always
plotting, and the fiercely loving Carmen could surely have called upon
Socialist leaders or others to remove the boy’s body and clean the apartment.
They could easily dispose of the boy’s bloody corpse, and the couple later
claim to know nothing about his whereabouts.
Obviously, the fascists have their photographs, but what are they but a
series of pictures of the couple attempting in open public, as model
socialists, to rehabilitate a boy like Juanito, to bring him into a better
world free from the one he previously inhabited. They have made no secret of
their attempts, introducing him even to their friends.
The fascists, of course, have previously “warned” the boy’s mother of
the situation, even naming Orbea as the man interfering with her son, with the
hope that she might take the matter up with the police. But she has not gone to
the police in fear for her son, primarily for her worries of what they might do
to him. How might she explain her resistance? What might happen to her if,
after the fact, she suddenly seemed penitent for her previous lack of parental
attention. And might not it be apparent if she were to report about those who
have brought her the information, that everything has been a plot of the
rightists? Were Nes to tell the police of his former relationships with Orbea,
that too might lead to a revelation that he is on the fascist’s paylist.
If this possibility is logical, as I believe it is, the tear we see
creep down Orbea’s cheek represents his own lack of courage and his realization
that he is now entrapped in normality. He
has apparently won his political
seat. And unless he confesses to a crime he did not commit, he will now
necessarily have to become one of those who never tire of covering up. To admit
his crime would also now be to condemn his own wife. Her love may, in fact,
have won him back but upon what conditions? Surely even as a leader of a fight
for new freedoms, Roberto Orbea will never be free for a moment in his life
again.
This is pure conjecture, of course. But in a film which also argues for
“an analysis of the concreteness of concrete reality” one has to imagine other
potentially concrete realities, a possibility sadder than all the others he has
projected for himself.
Los Angeles, September 5, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (September 2022).
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