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The waning days of Franco’s dictatorship enlivened the desires of a generation of artists whose transgressive fantasies had been simmering for decades. Among them, was the ever-political enfant terrible of Spanish cinema: Eloy de la Iglesia.
Though his prolific career merits its own retrospective, Spectacle Theater will be showing the filmmaker’s late-career gems as part of our continued spotlight on Spain’s Cine QuinQui. Having already proved himself a master of the melodrama with films like EL DIPUTADO and EL SACERDOTE, and demonstrated a proclivity for the demented with CANNIBAL MAN, De la Iglesia’s commitment to making films about the young and aimless (some might say doomed) generation caught in the historical juncture between Franco and a free, but unsteady, future dually testifies to his forward-thinking political zeal as much as his fascination with social groups undercutting cultural norms.
Coming off the heels of a series of critically acclaimed films, De la Iglesia turned his attention to his nation’s youth with 1980’s NAVAJEROS. Often compared to Luis Buñuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS despite their only similarities being the spoken language and focus on downtrodden adolescents, NAVAJEROS marks De la Iglesia’s first foray into his exploration of QuinQui customs and aesthetics. This initiation into the sub-group’s lifestyle would bring him face-to-face with its preoccupations –– sex and drugs. Naturally, each of the core elements of QuinQui culture would inform the filmmaker’s most famous films from this era: COLEGAS and EL PICO + EL PICO 2 respectively. COLEGAS is a sex comedy about two teenagers hustling to pay for an abortion. The EL PICO diptych chronicles a Basque Civil Guard’s strained relationship with this son who is addicted to heroin. In the last film from this program, the oft unseen LA ESTANQUERA DE VALLECAS, De la Iglesia offers a more nuanced entry in QuinQui film by honing in on a tobacco shop where a heist’s slow worsening reveals the underlying stressors forcing the film’s protagonists to a life of crime.