Fun and games with Ava Gardner and her entourage in Paco León's BURN, MADRID, BURN

The initial scene of BURN, MADRID, BURN (Arde Madrid) -- the popular 2018 Spanish cable TV series making its American debut via MHz Choice this coming week -- is so low-key, clever and pointed that you may think you're in for something pretty special -- a politically, socially, culturally aware look at the early 1960s, Spanish-style.

The delicious black-and-white cinematography (via Pau Esteve Birba) is succulent enough to keep that idea alive for awhile, too. Eventually, however, something best described as crass takes over, and you realize that what you'll be getting here is not quite what you expected.

Wait: Before you take this as a negative review, I ought to say that, to my mind, crass certainly has its uses. And the series' creators, Paco León (shown at right, who co-wrote and directed each of the eight episodes, while acting as one of the producers and taking a leading role, too) and Anna R. Costa put their crassness to pretty productive use throughout.

Burn, Madrid, Burn tells the tale of the time when internationally famous actress Ava Gardner lived in Spain during the early 1960s while her career was making that difficult transition of a beautiful actress now moving into middle age (she had just turned 39 at the time). This is Franco's Spain, remember, so everything from heavy-duty repression, internecine spying and the black market are in full swing.

Now, while Ms Gardner had a reputation for the crass -- she let her preference for males with large cocks be known (her comment about Frank Sinatra's appendage is legendary ) -- the casting of Debi Mazar (above, right) in the role is problematic. God knows, Ms Mazar can do crass with the best of them, but her body is short and chunky, while Gardner's was longer and leaner. As for facial beauty, comparisons are odious there, as well. Fortunately, Mazar gives a good performance otherwise and has a supporting role to the series' real stars: Inma Cuesta (above and below, left) and Mr. León (below, right).

Ms Cuesta is almost always first-rate, while León is particularly adept at playing semi-sleazeballs. The plot takes Cuesta from school-teaching to spying on Gardner for Franco, because the actress is suspected of having Communist sympathies. Bootlegging, bad debts, cross-dressing, the heist of a diamond necklace and more figure into the plot of this eight-episode (each one running around 40 minutes) show, which can pretty easily be binged in a single long sitting.

Treats along the way include Argentina's Juan Peron and his post-Eva wife (Osmar Núñez and Fabiana García Lago, above) who, as downstairs neighbors of Gardner, must put up with her noisy, all-night parties; a pretty young-and-pregnant maid (Anna Castillo, below, center) who proves the sweetest character on view; and one very funny scene involving a full-frontal shot or two of Gardner's one-night-stand and his memorable member in full morning array.

The series may be predictable but it's mostly frothy fun. And that gorgeous black-and-white cinematography is worth your time all by itself. From MHz Choice, Burn, Madrid, Burn hits streaming -- via this notable service specializing in some very good foreign television -- this Tuesday, May 5. Click here for more information.

SCN: In his powerful THE SLEEPING VOICE, Benito Zambrano probes the post-Civil War

When Americans hear about movies set in women's prisons, we tend to imagine campy exploitation films. Spaniards, I suspect, have a bit of a different reaction -- at least those who still remember the Spanish Civil War and the years immediately afterward, which unfortunately stretched into decades. THE SLEEPING VOICE (La voz dormida), a new film from the talented writer/director Benito Zambrano (Habana Blues and Solas), co-adapted by Ignacio del Moral from the novel by the late Dulce Chacón, begins with an alarming scene set in a women's prison in 1940, in which one large group of women are taken out to the courtyard to be executed by firing squad. One of them has difficulty finding the strength to stand and walk, and what she says about leaving her family will tear you apart. What's left of you after this scene, the remainder of the movie will make mincemeat.

Not that The Sleeping Voz is especially violent or bloody. Señor Zambrano, shown at right, does what he must to make the necessary points, but because so much of his film takes place inside this prison, in which he situates not only his women but us viewers, the movie forces us to experience what it is like to suffer without -- or at least with very little-- hope and to be nearly powerless. As we soon see, one's only power here is to refuse: to say "no" to the Eucharist in church -- seeing as how the Catholic Church in Spain at this time capitulated almost entirely to the Franco/fascist side -- or to scream aloud your most precious belief in that moment before you are shot.

TrustMovies has seen many, many histories of Spain during this period -- several are usually part of each year's Spanish Cinema Now series, with this year no exception -- but few have affected him as deeply as this new film. The reason, he believes, has to do with the fact that all we see here is from a woman's point of view, showing us how everything -- every single thing from life and limb to one's own offspring -- is no longer your own. As one person tells another, "In the new Spain, even your dead don't belong to you."

The story concerns two sisters, Tensi and Pepita (played by Inma Cuesta and María León, shown at far and near left, respectively). Pepita has come to Madrid from Cordoba to find work  so that she can visit and help Tensi, who is pregnant and in prison. Think of Franco's Spain as something with a level of evil somewhere between our McCarthy-era blacklisting witch hunts and what Hitler's Germany did to Europe's Jews. In post-Civil War Spain, the cruelty, torture and death meted out to Communists and supposed Commie sympathizers affected husbands, wives and entire families.

When the movie focuses on the imprisoned Tensi (above), it is at its darkest, and Ms Cuesta is truly riveting. This actress possesses such a grand combination of ferocity and deep feeling that she simply commands the screen at all times.

When its gaze comes to rest on Pepita, at right, who has taken employment in the home of a wealthy bourgeois family, the film opens up to embrace something other than prison life and thus frees us, at least momentarily, from our cell. Zambrano treads a wise path between the two women and their locations, which keeps us from giving in to total despair. Ms León proves a smart and feisty performer, lending her character strength that, early on, she had no idea she possessed. (This actress -- as versatile as she is good -- is just about unrecognizable from the role of the daughter she played in SCN's Carmina or Blow Up.)

The men on hand, including the very attractive TV actor Marc Clotet, above, are either those working for the return of the Republic or Franco's minions. Yet even here, and regarding both men and women, the filmmakers allow for human frailty. While some of the people we meet, including the military brass, prison guards, priests and nuns, are black indeed, others fall somewhere along the usual bell curve of mankind's character.

This film is a perfect memorial to the horrors and the institutionalized barbarity of the Franco era, the likes of which we've rarely seen in this particular manner until now. It played twice at Spanish Cinema Now, but I hope that there will be some further distribution here in the U.S. This is a slice of foreign history of which American audiences should find more than a little frightening, interesting and worthwhile.