Goya in Bordeaux

September 15, 2006 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Exploring the life, style, and impact of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828), “Goya In Bordeaux” is itself a work of art from Spanish director, Carlos Saura. The film tosses together fragments of history, fantasy, biography, and art appreciation into a blend that coheres, through the strength of its narrative and unbounded visual exuberance.

Goya, in the ebbing years of his life, is living in exile in Bordeaux, one of the celebrity Spanish liberals who strongly protested the corrupt regime of Ferdinand VII. The last of his lovers appears now and again at his bedside, but it is his daughter who stays, intently absorbing her father’s verbal journey through the key events of his past, recounted in the manner of a confidential, deeply-felt lecture. He continues to paint at night, and in flashbacks stirred by conversations with his daughter, by awful headaches, and by the befuddlement of age, he relives key times in his life, particularly his relationship with the Duchess of Alba, his discovery of how he wanted to paint (insight provided by Velázquez’s work), and his lifelong celebration of the imagination. Throughout, his reveries become tableaux of his paintings. Goya’s highly-influential oil paintings were rejected from the salon of the 18th Century and seen as simple court paintings for the aristocracy. Years after his death, however, Goya’s work was finally recognized and was said to have set the foundations for the Modern Art movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Starring: Francisco Rabal, Jose Coronado, Dafne Fernandez, Maribel Verdu, Eulalia Ramon.
Written by Carlos Saura.
Directed by Carlos Saura and Vittorio Storaro.
Produced by Andres Vincente Gomez, Pierre-Louis Thevenet and Andres Vicente Gomez.