Movies in Brief

The Collector. “Almost a love story,” the posters declare, but “Almost a sick joke” would be more like it: a butterfly-collecting clerk wins some money and starts chasing girls, but treats them much the same. Producer-director William Wyler’s films are nothing if not careful, and he has lavished such care on this adaptation of John Fowles’ novel that one expects something more than a horror-story about a madman and a persecuted maiden; but, no, Wyler and Company have exquisitely pinned, fixed, mounted and framed an old, battered, dusty moth, and when they’re done with it all one can say is (reflections on class-hatred, repression and necrophilia aside), if only he were not so mad, or if only she could hit harder. Terence Stamp, who did well as Billy Budd, here manages to look like the son of Frankenstein’s monster, without special make-up. Samantha Eggar is the pretty catch who aggravates this poor collector’s illness by talking too much and trying to escape.

La Tia Tula. Enthusiastic reviewers have written of peculiar Spanish customs and sexual repression, but they are not that peculiar, and this is not one of those films about people who don’t know what’s happening to them while the audience is never allowed to forget it. Aunt Tula takes care of her dead sister’s family. The children love her and, in time, so does her brother-in-law. But she does not make decisions lightly, and puts some decisions off indefinitely, so that before she has overcome the complexity of emotions that she calls self-respect and her priest calls pride, the widower has trapped himself into a different marriage. Director Miguel Picazo, who shares credit for adapting Miguel de Unamuno’s novel, has filmed this adult love story in a currently unfashionable style, with a nice sense of proportion. There are no looming close-ups, no long-held still-lifes or landscapes of mystical significance, no kicking the camera about during an attempted rape or a party scene. Finally, one would not expect a final parting in a railroad station to be anything but a tiresome cliché, but Picazo brings that off, too. Aurora Bautista is excellent as Tula, and the rest of the cast is adequate.

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The Collector. “Almost a love story,” the posters declare, but “Almost a sick joke” would be more like it: a butterfly-collecting clerk wins some money and starts chasing girls, but treats them much the same. Producer-director William Wyler’s films are nothing if not careful, and he has lavished such care on this adaptation of John Fowles’ novel that one expects something more than a horror-story about a madman and a persecuted maiden; but, no, Wyler and Company have exquisitely pinned, fixed, mounted and framed an old, battered, dusty moth, and when they’re done with it all one can say is (reflections on class-hatred, repression and necrophilia aside), if only he were not so mad, or if only she could hit harder. Terence Stamp, who did well as Billy Budd, here manages to look like the son of Frankenstein’s monster, without special make-up. Samantha Eggar is the pretty catch who aggravates this poor collector’s illness by talking too much and trying to escape.

La Tia Tula. Enthusiastic reviewers have written of peculiar Spanish customs and sexual repression, but they are not that peculiar, and this is not one of those films about people who don’t know what’s happening to them while the audience is never allowed to forget it. Aunt Tula takes care of her dead sister’s family. The children love her and, in time, so does her brother-in-law. But she does not make decisions lightly, and puts some decisions off indefinitely, so that before she has overcome the complexity of emotions that she calls self-respect and her priest calls pride, the widower has trapped himself into a different marriage. Director Miguel Picazo, who shares credit for adapting Miguel de Unamuno’s novel, has filmed this adult love story in a currently unfashionable style, with a nice sense of proportion. There are no looming close-ups, no long-held still-lifes or landscapes of mystical significance, no kicking the camera about during an attempted rape or a party scene. Finally, one would not expect a final parting in a railroad station to be anything but a tiresome cliché, but Picazo brings that off, too. Aurora Bautista is excellent as Tula, and the rest of the cast is adequate.