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The Naked Eye (La mirada del otro)

 
"I haven't chosen a character, I've chosen a movie," says Italian actress Laura Morante about her participation in Vicente Aranda's new film. "The role is risky in many ways, but then again, it's risk that I like."
The 30-ish Begogna is a role full of psychological complexity and sexual frankness. With a video camera, she documents her exploits, which push her to the boundary between pleasure and pain. Laura Morante is the epitome of the female enigma: contradictory, unscrupulous, vulnerable, lascivious and tender.
Without letting herself be exploited by the inquisitive camera lens, the 34-year-old former Armani model bares not only her body, but also her soul in a brilliant performance. She gives the, sometimes extreme, erotic scenes a touchingly brave and honest magic. Her performance also lessens the blow of the end of one of the longest and most creative liaisons in Spanish cinema – Vicente Aranda and his muse of the past 20 years, Victoria Abril, who worked together on ten films. The eight-week shooting of the $4.5 million project was jeopardized when Arante and Abril parted company. But Laura Morante was a godsend for the vacant leading role. "Laura is a fine actress and showed such enthusiasm when she accepted the part that it was fundamental to me," the 71-year-old Vicente Aranda explains. He sees his erotic thriller as a portrait of "a woman who wishes not to discover her true self, but who wants others to discover it for her. She believes in herself as long as others believe in her. It's those men who explain who she is."

Synopsis

Begoña, the main protagonist in Vicente Aranda's La mirada del otro, has one primary objective in life - to get laid. She gets herself a toyboy, picks up a young hipster and his wife, struts around dodgy backstreets tarted up as a puta and still keeps coming back for more. She also records everything in her video diary. But satisfaction is fleeting. "The fingers that have caressed me have left no marks," she confesses onscreen to her diary.
In answer to critics who might try to label his film as artsy soft porn, Aranda explains: "This is not an erotic film. It's psycho-erotic." The 71-year-old director, when questioned about his films - especially, implicitly, their perversions - wears the spectacles, cardigan and mild-mannered exasperation of a university professor whose student just doesn't get it - and probably never will.
"Begoña's ambition is transparency," he says. "Not the idea of 'getting to know oneself', but insisting on others knowing who you really are. She's not afraid of the truth. She asks what her role is in life  and replies with vitality. She wants to enjoy life in its widest expression, and looks for clarity through sex, to be herself and for others to see her as she is. That's why I feel sympathy for her."
La mirada del otro is Aranda's 18th film, since making his debut in 1964 with the social realism of Brillante porvenir and the subsequent Fata Morgana. Recent international successes have included La pasión turca and Amantes, the latter earning Victoria Abril best actress honours at Berlin in 1991.

 (Dir): Vicente Aranda (Scr): Alvaro del Amo, Vicente Aranda (Cast): Laura Morante, Miguel Bosé, Ana Obregón (Running time): 105 Minutes
 
 

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