Page 74 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

DUALITY IN THE NARRATIVE: ALTERNATING VERSIONS, READING THE SHIFTS IN
EMPHASIS AS MEDIA/POLITICAL HISTORY
There are generations that remember some television programmes better than certain political
events. Or they remember those events that had to do with television better.*'

While de la Iglesia owes his cult status in part to the 'look' of his films, what lets a film such as
Muertos de risa connect as well as it did to audiences not accustomed to Spanish films, such as at the
recent Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, is its narrative structure. In Muertos de risa, this is clear
but by no means simplistic. Like a successful video game, it is well crafted in its complexity, and
punctuated with cartoonish physical violence. Nino and Bruno's manager narrates their story from a
chronological flashback of their joint murder/demise on their special reunion programme, through a
linearly told rise of their career. Angel Fernandez-Santos in his El Pais review was particularly scornful
of the voice-over device:

There is no way to make the merely informative voice of Alex Angulo one's own. When in
a film we know the end from the beginning, the hook for our attention ought to be more
complex and engaging.26

I disagree with Fernandez-Santos' assessment of the effect of voice-over in this film. The documentary
tone set by voice-over sustains the viewer through the general filmic concern with histories. Moreover,
other filmic elements - of editing and camera position - do actively engage the viewer, even a viewer
who tires of listening to Alex Angulo.
At their apogee the comedians become jealous of each other and stop performing together. Yet,
although estranged, their fame lives on in syndication. In parallel sequences, each beginning with an
establishing shot of their side-by-side mansions, they are portrayed living in tormented seclusion,
only simulating their success to each other. While Nino goes to bed with cotton in his eats, he keeps
his hired go-go dancers on the job casting shadows of a wild party on his front room shades. The
simulacrum, or media image, is all that exists until Bruno literally invades Nino's home to stop his
torment. Yet what appears to be a break from simulation merely marks the transition to a different
set of cinematic or media allusions. In a sequence reminiscent of the burglars' invasion in Home Alone
(1990), Bruno crawls through the pet door, where, stuck, he is attacked by Nino's mother's cat. He
shoves the cat in the refrigerator's freezer. The mother dies of shock - she falls over backwards like
a cartoon character - when she discovers her frozen per. Subsequently, Nino extracts his revenge
- plays tricks and pummels - on Bruno for his mother's death during the filming of a television show.
Afterward the narrative splits and alternates yet again, to include the tale of stardom from the point
of view first of Nino, then Bruno.
One of the difficult moments for the viewer to follow is the transition from the sequence
of maximum estrangement, which occurs at the same time as Tejero's coup attempt, to Nino's
interpretation of events. Until we see Bruno's version later in the subsequent scene, we take Nino's
story as the only or 'true' one. In Nino's version, Nino is an international pop singing star and Bruno

60