Bilbao

The protagonist in Bigas Luna’s erotic thriller is a prostitute and stripper named Bilbao. She becomes the murky object of desire for a stalker who wants her like a collector craves a valuable showpiece. For Leo, sexual gratification is not as important as possession. At the same time, he is in a relationship with an older woman, a relationship in which milk plays a major role. Set in the stuffy interiors of nightclubs, a slaughterhouse and the bedroom, linking sex with death and the body with meat, the film creates an evocative aura of growing anxiety. Filmed after the collapse of the dictatorship of General Franco, when censorship was lifted in Spain, Bilbao was treated for a long time like many other erotic films from that decade, as a sexist fantasy that captures women in the trap of a masculine gaze, refusing them subjectivity. Although it actually comes from a form of stripping known as destape, Luna’s tasteful, dark softcore film is, on the one hand, a violent reaction to decades of oppression and censorship, and, on the other, a fascinating deconstruction of the violent patriarchal masculinity of the Franco era, which saw only two roles for women: as mothers or whores. (New Horizons International Film Festival)