REVIEW: LA MADRE MUERTA BY JUANMA BAJO ULLOA
By Elena Romea(*)
LA MADRE MUERTA (1993) is Juanma Bajo Ullo second feature film. This was written together with his brother Eduardo as it happened in his first movie ALAS DE MARIPOSA (1991).
Trying not to spoil it, let me say that this is a kind of cruel fairy tale in which the wild soul of a cold-blooded and atrocious man is revealed.
The movie starts with a thief breaking into a painting restorer’s house, who is shot and killed. Her daughter is as well but she survives the crime. Twenty years later, we find Leire (the daughter) mute and with the mental age of a child, spending most of her time in a mental home and being cared for by her grandmother. A chance meeting between Leire and Ismael —the thief—, who now works in a bar, leads him to think that she still might be able to recognize him and tell the police. With the help of his girlfriend Maite, he kidnaps Leire and chains her to the bed in his house. He is unable to kill her, however, and instead asks the mental home for money for her return. While she is kept, Leire and Ismael grow closer and closer through his attempts to make her laugh and their mutual love for chocolate, but Maite gets jealous and thinks there is some kind of love/sex relation between them.
This film was not as successful as it was expected and the director, after being given some bad reviews on the film at some festivals, commented that his work belonged to a new kind of cinema the old school critics did not understand at all, as it was not about the Spanish Civil war. He also added that the critics only paid attention to their friends’ movies considering other films less interesting or not worth at all. I believe that the movie didn’t deserve the negative comments and that it is Bajo Ulloa’s best together with ALAS DE MARIPOSA.
Besides, there was also controversy related to the poster as it showed a Christian work of art torn, so it was considered a kind of sacrilege. Bajo Ulloa had to explain that it has nothing to do with religion but with aesthetics and the first scene in the movie.
Truth is that it took him four years to direct another feature: Airbag and that, unfortunately, had nothing to do with his first films. He changed the register completely and started working with the popular gender of surrealistic silly comedy cinema. A path he has been following till now.
What I liked the most was the acting. The main stars are Karra Elejalde, Ana Álvarez, Silvia Marsó, and Lio, playing all of them fantastic roles. Also, there is a bittersweet mood all through the film which can make the spectator feel uncomfortable but easy. Inside the deep drama we find some hilarious moments as the chloroform one when kidnapping Leire, the misunderstanding when Ismael is giving chocolate to Leire – chained to the bed— but Maite and Blanca —hidden behind the closet— thought she was being sexually abused and many more.
It is true that there is some screenplay nonsense, especially when Ismael tries to kill the girl or Blanca´s reaction to Leire’s disappearance which breaks the narrative and the focus of the movie.
Anyways, it is a must-see work, an essential piece of Spanish cinema in the 90s, a feature that tried to make something different, something out of the classic and boring patterns from the past.
LA MADRE MUERTA can be watched on VOD platforms Netflix and Flixole.
You can watch out online video club on this film in Spanish here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iIhy8MUUc0&t=5s
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Elena Romea is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, and Horror Rises from Spain. A literature and cinema researcher, finishing her postgraduate studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books such as Fangoria and Hidden Horror. She has also been in charge of several translations.
