Page 70 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Almodóvar's own artistic independence and extraordinary profitability within the Spanish
film industry has long been asserted and at times attributed to the existence of his loyal 'family' of
co-workers that is El Deseo.8 Smith points out that having his own production company allowed
Almodóvar the luxury to film sequences in order. Not all first-time directors produced by El Deseo
have shared de la Iglesias eventual triumphs; Monica Lagunas Tengo una casa (1996) is one example
of a youth-oriented, but artistically abysmal, film backed by El Deseo. But there is no question that
the selection by Almodóvar positioned de la Iglesia for eventual recognition in a transnational context.
De la Iglesia entered the market before Spanish government film subsidies had an effective special
category targeted to first-time directors, and also before Eurimages, the system of European co-
production support, was strongly viable for Spain. As Angus Finney argues, European film industries
in the 1990s were particularly blind to the need to train film producers, instead placing emphasis in
film schools on the development of directors.''
After Acción mutante, all of de la Iglesias films were produced by Andrés Vincente Gómez, 'the
top Spanish producer',10 active in the business since 1962 and from 1994 the head of Sogotel's
production unit. All these subsequent films have been co-productions. From his earliest projects,
Gomez's career has been distinguished in its emphasis on foreign markets. He worked in charge of
foreign markets, for example, for two years for Elias Querejeta, perhaps the most significant Spanish
producer ever in terms of the artistic impact of the films he produced. Of Gomez's relationship with
de la Iglesia, Antonio Santamarina Alcón writes, 'his good nose also leads him to collaborate with the
most restless and promising young directors of the 1990s'.11 Gómez produced Fernando Trueba's
international success, the Oscar-winning Belle époque (1992) and two critical disasters aimed at an
international market, El sueño del mono loco (Twisted Obsession, 1989) and the Hollywood-farce Two
Much (1995).
De la Iglesia followed this same ill-fated pattern into Hollywood and English-language production
with Perdita Durango (1997), generally termed a critical disaster. As Arroyo intones:

Even if Alex de la Iglesia is one of the most interesting young directors working today, Perdita
Durango is not the film that will convince anyone of this fact.12

To be fair to de la Iglesia, he picked up the Perdita Durango project after the Catalan director Bigas
Luna pulled out of it. The script had numerous problems from the start. In an overall positive review
the Spanish critic M. Torreiro of El Pais still faults the logic of the script above all, asking

why a love relationship marked by the most absolute madness and by unstoppable passion
suddenly is interrupted, and even dissolved towards the middle of the picture, when the
character for whom the film is named loses her lead role. 13

Yet, Perdita Durango fell flat because de la Iglesia did not know American or Mexican culture well
enough. For American mainstream culture, the film lacked a great soundtrack. For Hispanic cultures,
the film, especially the santería sequences, came off flat-footed. Arroyo is absolutely correct when he
pans Perdita Durango:

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