IF YOU are looking for the cathartic experience from watching a movie, then this film is not for you.
With its typical European non-linear plot development, Retrato de Mujer con Hombre, doesn’t play with exposition, climax, or denouement. It doesn’t give Sophist-like preaching and leaves all the realization to the audience.
Cristina (Paulina Galvez) is a picture of an independent and liberated woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. She is happy and successful with her career as a lawyer. She owns a beautiful apartment and she has “non-contractual” affairs with men she likes.
She believes she doesn’t need a man in her life, so she builds up around her a cocoon to where she retreats at the threat of a life-destructive sting: love.
But Cristina cannot hide for long, for Diego (Bruno Squarcia), a client who is divorcing his wife, breaks the barrier Cristina built against love.
When Cristina falls for Diego, the life that she painstakingly organized tumbles down, making her the woman that she is trying to avoid.
The film is good in juxtaposing contrasts. Cristina is completely the opposite of her friend, Marisa (Myriam Mezieres). Marisa has a loving husband and two kids. She has a stable life and relationship but she lacks self-fulfillment and regards her life as a cycle of regrets. In the end, she succumbs to the paranoia and bitter resignation she herself created and commits suicide.
Cristina, on the other hand, exhibits a good grasp of herself despite her overly defensive personality and lack of support from her family. Although she momentarily gets lost in the desert of her emotions, she is able to collect the pieces of her broken self in the end.
The film has hints of being anti-male. Diego is portrayed as selfish, indecisive and weak. Joaquin (Pedro Miguel Martinez), Marisa’s husband, is a bore. He fails to penetrate the inner personality of her wife. Although he loves her, he is stuck to the surface of their relationship.
Moreover, Retrato de Mujer con Hombre reinforces a new hierarchy of values so that love is thrown out of the window, and self-fulfillment is not realized in family but in career.
The movie gives a glimpse of the Spanish lifestyle. It shows Spanish appreciation for the arts and their fondness for socialization and partying.
Retrato de Mujer con Hombre is part of the featured films in Pelikula, one of the activities in the Fiesta 2002, Spanish Festival for the Culture and the Arts, sponsored by Instituto Cervantes.
