BIFFF 2011 review: Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus gives the Spanish horror genre another turn of the screw

It's now over a decade ago that Alex de la Iglesia, who opened this year's BIFFF on Thursday night with his film The Last Circus (Balada Triste de Trompeta), took Spain by storm when his film  La Comunidad (Common Wealth) opened to rave reviews and thus paved the way to a new tendency he had initiated some years before with  El Día de la Bestia and that was then thought to mark the beginning of a new genre that, unfortunately, he had been unable or unwilling to further develop until now. Ignited by a bravura comeback performance by Almodovar's erstwhile muse Carmen Maura, La Comunidad was a stunningly satisfying hydride of Spanish Costumbrism and horror thriller.
At the same time a bunch of young filmmakers, driven by the success of de la Iglesia's films and especially of Alejandro Amenábar's disturbing debut Tesis, realised that the answer to the eternal box office conundrum of Spanish cinema was possibly to be found in a local adaptation of Wes Craven's teenager snappy horror films.  Films as unnecessary and forgettable but profitable as El arte de morir, Tuno negro or School Killer are examples of this new wave of Spanish horror flicks.
2007 Rec, one of the biggest hits in recent Spanish cinema, was the result of this double tendency. Jaume Balagueró, one of its two helmers, is in fact one of the champions of the group of new directors that kicked off that series of horror movies taking as model the classic American slasher. In fact, Balagueró has never rennounced to the American popular culture influence on his films, as he made it clear in some of his casting choices (Oscar winner Anna Paquin in Darkness or Calista 'Ally McBeal' Flockhart in Frágiles). Scream and I know what you did last summer aside, the references for Rec go further back to George A. Romero's classic zombie films and, especially Scream creator's 1972 The Last House on the Left and 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its use of documenatery techniques in order to induce fear and terror in viewers. A classical zombie horror genre movie, Rec is also a perfect example of Blair Witch-ish mockumentary, most notably thanks to  the nausea-inducing handheld camera work.

However, the influence of Alex de la Iglesia's characteristic  Spanish horror Costumbrism on Rec, especially that of  La Comunidad,  is obvious not only on the choice of a tenement building as space of the action but in its extraordinary first 45 minutes,  which featured some of the most memorable dialogue ever found in a horror movie and that effectively contributed to build up the tension for the stomach-churning second part.
It would be therefore an exaggeration to say that The Last Circus comes from nowhere, but it is also true that not since a long time has a film gone so far over the top both in its aspirations and in its execution. De la Iglesia's latest work is as hard to describe as it is to classify. The main plot line of the film follows two clowns, a sad one and a silly one, both in love with a beautiful acrobat, but de la Iglesia turns this love triangle into a metaphor of post-Civil War Spain and, on the way, he makes a cocktail out of seemingly indigestible ingredients that, surprisingly enough, end up working with clockwork precision. The filmmaker blends together circus freaks with real characters, with a hilarious cameo of General Franco himself, the main storyline interweaving with real facts of Spanish history during Franco's dictatorship, including the 1973 assassination of Prime Minister Carrero Blanco by four members of ETA, a fact that gives rise to the film's best line, a brilliant flash of genius writing that I won't reveal here but that summarizes better than any review this truly original film.
On top of everything the film abounds in more or less accessible references to Spanish popular culture, from prominent cases of its criminal history to the Eurovision Song Contest or one of its biggest stars, Raphael, to whose song Balada de la Trompeta the films owes its original title.
Formally, de la Iglesia shows once more an amazing visual virtuosity, which he takes from his love to the aesthetics of comic books and to classic genre movies, in this case especially those by Tod Browning, not only the more obvious Freaks (1932), but the silent classic The Unknown (1927), whose knife thrower Alonzo the Armless, played by Lon Chaney, desperately in love with the carnival girl (a young Joan Crawford) is probably the origin of the sad clown in The Last Circus.

And then there is Hitchcock, ubiquitous in the way de la Iglesia induces suspense through the physicality of the objects and in the close-ups of a very Kim Novakish Carolina Bang, but especially in the memorable final sequence in which the director relocates the Mount Rushmore of North by Northwest to the controversial Valley of the Fallen, the megalomaniac monument erected by Franco to commemorate Civil War fighters, and in which de la Iglesia confirms his attachment to the dramatic effect of vertigo in action scenes.
The Last Circus is a film that viewers can hate or love (I count myself among the latter), but it certainly eludes that reaction any work of art should aspire to avoid: indifference.

Comments

[Uncle Walt]

Congratulations on this post, one of your best to date. I agree with everything you say, specially about Jaume Balagueró: he's in a complete different league from the directors of the other slasher movies that you mention. His movies are very reminiscent of hard-core horror flicks, not so much the tongue-in-cheek, slasher-spoof iniciated by Scream. They're always very atmospheric and with great photography, since Balagueró has a great feeling for creating tension and out of everyday situations (Darkness and the truly wonderful The Nameless are clear examples of that), with great build-ups to the main act of the plot, which, unfortunately, fails to deliver in some of his earlier efforts.

As for De la Iglesia... Genious! Greatest opening credits ever!!!