Belle Epoque

The movie has excellent character development, charming and humorous dialogues, lovely cinematography and an overall attractiveness.

The male lead has led an innocent existence in which he spent some time in a seminary, and then has deserted from the army. Now when he meets the four daughters of a libertine aging artist who has befriended him, he wants to make up for lost time. The older three daughters use him for their forbidden pleasures, and don't take the encounters seriously. Being unsophisticated, he falls in love with each until the next one seduces him. He doesn't realize until almost too late, that the youngest actually loves him, although I can't see what qualities he has except for his looks. Oh, that's right, he cooks better than anyone in the family.

The costume celebration and its aftermath is one of the most hilarious I've seen in a movie regardless of language.

I'm sure there were social messages that without knowledge of Spanish customs and history, were not apparent. There seemed to be a strong association with death. The side story of the young man who is infatuated with the second daughter but can't break away from his mother or tradition, until his frustration causes him to falsely renounce everything his mother stands for, probably symbolizes certain hypocrises in Spain at that point in history as it tried to break away from a moonarchy but couldn't make up its mind.

Enjoy!

The target of the satire is mostly the Catholic church and the Fascists, but the Republicans take some hits as well. The war is entirely in the background except for a little comédie noire scene at the outset where two stupido Fascists soldiers do themselves in. Our hero's foil is a Jerry Lewis sort of mamma's boy romancing one of the daughters with his inheritance and his mother. He flip-flops between the church and the Republicans trying to please mamma and Clara, his enchantress, second daughter of Manolo. Manolo's foil is the parish priest, a hypocritical libertine, who commits most of the deadly sins before expiring by his own hand when the Republicans win (temporarily) the war.

The title (in English, "The Age of Beauty") is ironic because of the war, but literal as it refers to the time of our youth. Is it not uplifting to recall our loves instead of our wars, to turn our political and religious hatreds into benign satirical jokes, and to see the beauty of our nature and not our bestiality?

The traditional comedy of course ends in marriage, but to whom? I'm betting on the beautiful Penélope Cruz, who was just eighteen when this film was released.