Vacas

Spanish director Julio Medem has built up somewhat of a cult following over the last few of years with his intense, complex and intricate romantic narratives. His films (most recently Sex and Lucia (2001)) so artfully skip back and forth between narrators, places and time zones that any linear narrative becomes irrelevant. Desire and the inevitability of fate are his themes, played out with dazzling imagination.

Now you can catch Medem's earlier works on DVD. His debut feature, Vacas (or Cows) (1992), is a claustrophobic saga following three generations of two rival Basque families and spanning pivotal events in Spanish history. It opens during the Second Carlist War in 1875. Sergeant Carmelo Mendiluze (Kandido Uranga) learns that a neighbour from his native village, Manuel Iriguibel (Carmelo Gomez), has joined the exhausted battalion. Eager for news of the birth of his new child, Carmelo befriends the inexperienced soldier, whose reputation as an expert 'aizcolari' (log-cutter) cannot conceal his fear of armed combat. His apprehension results in tragic consequences for Carmelo, and Manuel ignominiously exits the battlefield and evades military duty. Thirty years on, a lingering feud continues between the Mendiluze and Iriguibel families, but the two warring factions are ineluctably connected as their children and their children's children find themselves drawn to each other.

Basque separatism in post-Franco Spain created its own mythology of rural dramas set among the Basque people, creating paragons and perpetuating the concept of a 'pure' race. Vacas is, to be sure, a rural drama. But Medem, a Basque himself, takes the mythology and turns it on its head. The omnipresent cows, surely as pastoral a symbol as it gets, come with flies and die from infection. An aizkolari, typically a hero of Basque culture, is denounced as a coward. Incest plagues the rural community and sours Medem's 'happy' ending, where two star-crossed lovers escaping the Civil War are in fact consenting half-siblings. And while the setting of this drama is a pastoral, the terrain here is psychological rather than physical. Claustrophobic cinematography creates a malevolent landscape haunted by latent desire and the brutality of life.

By using the same actors to play men of different generations (Carlos Gomez first plays the cowardly Manuel, then his dashing son Ignacio and finally Ignacio's adult illegitimate son Peru, a photojournalist documenting the Civil War; while Kandido Uranga plays first the doomed Carmelo and then Carmelošs obsessive and haunted son Juan) Medem also emphasizes the cyclical nature of familial histories and unresolved conflict.

Vacas is an astonishingly accomplished and complex debut work. If even remotely interested in Spanish cinema, itšs worth investigating. The DVD comes with extra features including a filmography for the director and main cast, trailer reels for Medem's other films, stills and brief notes on the film.

Reviewed by Monika Maurer