In fact the critics were wrong as usual and sadly most online reviewers assume that this is a bad movie before seeing it. They had already decided that this was an opportunity to indulge in some cheap snark.
The fact is that Bolero is an erotic fantasy romance. This is a kind of movie that frightens mainstream audiences and by the 80s mainstream critics (who praised such movies to the skies in the 70s) had decided that they strongly disapproved of such movies. If you want to enjoy Bolero you have to accept that yes it is an erotic movie.
I shared most of these prejudices before deciding that perhaps I should take another look at the film. I also shared the disdain for Bo Derek until I saw her in Tarzan the Ape Man (1981). Watching her in that I found myself realising that she was actually pretty good. She was giving exactly the performance that was required. It was also the performance that her director, John Dekek (who was also her husband, something else that enraged critics), wanted. She was doing what actresses get paid to do.
Bo Derek is just one in the long line of actresses from the 70s to the 90s who were targeted for career destruction by critics.
Which brings us to Bolero. It is the 1920s. Ayre MacGillvary (Bo Derek) has just graduated from college and has inherited an immense fortune. Now she wants adventure. The first step is to lose her virginity. But she’s a romantic girl and she has seen all of Rudolph Valentino’s movies and she wants the experience to be special. She wants Valentino as the Sheikh to carry her off into the sands of the desert on his horse.
Reality doesn’t always match our dreams. She finds her sheikh and he is handsome and he is a real sheikh but he’s a poetry-writing Oxford graduate and carrying her off on his horse is a problem. He isn’t good with horses. He’s scared of them.
Next up she decides to go to Spain to find a handsome matador. Like Valentino in Blood and Sand.
She finds her matador, Angel Sacristan (Andrea Occhipinti), but he’s also not quite what one might expect. He’s the least popular matador in the country because he never kills the bull. So if you’re worried there’s going to be animal cruelty in this movie I can set your mind at rest. There isn’t any. No bulls are killed. No bulls are injured. For Angel bullfighting is simply a test of skill and courage.
Ayre may have found her dream but there’s Angel’s crazy gypsy girlfriend who vows to kill any woman who steals her man.
And then there’s an accident. Not a fatal one, but it’s a blow to poor Ayre’s dreams.
Among other things this is a movie about women’s sexual fantasies and being a woman Ayre’s fantasies are as much about love as they are about sex. This is a very very romantic movie.
It’s also an homage to silent cinema. Ayre doesn’t just want a man. She wants the kind of romantic hero she has seen in the movies.
It also features sex scenes that are quite explicit for a mainstream Hollywood movie, and a lot of nudity. This was reason enough for many critics to dismiss it out of hand.
It is an erotic movie but it’s an erotic romance movie and it’s a slightly offbeat movie as well.
Don’t worry about whether it gets any of the period details right. This is a total fantasy, inspired by the world of silent cinema rather than the actual world of the 1920s. For the same reason don’t fret too much about any implausibilities in the plot.
I enjoyed Bolero quite a bit and I highly recommend it as pure romantic fantasy.
I saw this movie on a very poor quality DVD years ago. Seeing it now on Blu-Ray is a revelation. It looks great.
No comments:
Post a Comment