Film review: El Calentito

I don’t usually look at TV guides, and when there is nothing on, I put on SBS as my default channel, and am often pleasantly surprised by what comes on. In this manner on Friday night, I was treated to a fantastic film. El Calentito is a coming-of-age story set in Madrid during Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy. In the course of an hour and a half, it managed to entertain as well as educate about the political background to western Europe’s last serious coup d’état attempt.

Sara (the one on the right in the above poster) is a young woman from a family of conservative franquistas. After a drug and alcohol-fuelled night at a bar named El Calentito, she ends up in bed with Carmen, a lesbian punk rocker whose band (‘Las Siux’, or ‘The Sioux’) needs to replace a departed member in order to secure a record deal. Over the course of ten days, she goes from good Catholic girl to punk rocker, and is ready to play her first gig, scheduled for El Calentito on the night of 23 February, 1981. In the meantime, the old guard from the Franco regime are preparing to use the country’s political instability and the threat of Basque terrorism to overthrow Spain’s fledgling democracy.

While rogue military officers are occupying the Parliament, the gig goes ahead more or less as planned, although illegally as gatherings of more than four people have been banned. In an allusion to the real-life occupation of the Parliament, an old man living next door to El Calentito occupies the bar, firing shots into the air, although he is eventually disarmed. In the early hours of the morning, King Juan Carlos I addresses the nation, proclaiming his opposition to the coup. (The film uses real footage of this event, which as a historical reference point, serves as Spain’s equivalent of 9/11 or the JFK assassination.) Safe in the knowledge that the fascist Thermidor has been thwarted, everyone lives happily ever after – Las Siux finish their set to cries of ‘¡Libertad!’, and Sara loses her virginity to the bisexual son of the transsexual bar owner. (Only on SBS!)

As a political scientist, I was fascinated by the attitude of the film’s reactionaries, chiefly Sara’s mother and the elderly man who holds the bar hostage. The historical period in question witnessed some progressive reforms such as the right to unionise and to strike, the legalisation of divorce, autonomy for the regions, and the legalisation of the Communist Party. (Alas, sex change operations are not yet legal, so El Calentito’s owner, Antonio, plans to go to Morocco to become Antonia.) All in all, these were fairly standard political and social changes which turned Spain into a constitutional monarchy and core EU member, and all undertaken by a centre-right government – the Socialists wouldn’t get into office until 1982. Regarding to the potential loss of Sara’s virginity, her mother says something along the lines of “this wouldn’t happen if Franco was still in power”, while the old man makes endless transphobic slurs against Antonia and calls the bar patrons ‘communists’.

These vignettes provide a glimpse into the thinking of the political right – because Spain’s new liberal democracy isn’t policing women’s bodies as they would like, they call for the re-imposition of fascism. The large cross above Sara’s bed and the reference to her having attended a convent school serve to remind the viewer of the intertwining of fascism and Catholicism in Spain between 1936 and 1975. (As do the latex nun outfits worn by the band members for part of their gig.) The role of anti-communism in franquista ideology is also significant – the first plans for a coup in the post-Franco era were partly fuelled by the Communist Party’s legalisation, but the party has never returned to power, and in fact has to form an electoral alliance with the Greens and a few other leftist parties in order to be ensured of winning parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, communists were to the Franco regime what the Muslim Brotherhood was to Hosni Mubarak – the potential alternative government whose prospect frightened the West so much that they felt compelled to stick with the incumbent. Due to the film’s setting in Madrid, it doesn’t get a chance to explore the anti-regionalist side of Spanish fascism, though one of its early scenes shows a television news report referring to the Basque terrorist group ETA. The centralising instincts of the Spanish right are still an important feature of the political landscape, and talk of Catalan independence in 2006 was met with speculation among senior military figures about a coup.

Sara’s mother’s longing for the return of Franco stands in contrast to Sara’s fellow band-members – the house which they share has a vandalised picture of the former dictator on a wall, just metres away from a blow-up sex doll. Although not formally active in politics, they relish the personal freedoms afforded to them by the downfall of the old regime. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is the horror on the faces of Antonia and her friend, a fellow pre-op transsexual, when they hear of the coup attempt. Their fear of what will happen to them overwhelms them, and they make plans to flee the country in the event that the coup is successful. Their little bar may be run-down, under-staffed, and full of unhygienic toilets covered in anarchist graffiti, but it is a refuge from the outside world in which punks, goths, and LGBTs are free to be themselves.

Despite the euphoria of the king’s speech, in which he firmly placed himself on the side of democracy, and in doing so allayed the fears of many that he was sympathetic to franquismo, I couldn’t help but recall why he reigns in the first place. Spain’s transition to democracy was carried out largely on the terms of the franquista elite, who foreclosed the possibility of restoring the Second Republic, which existed from 1931 until its military defeat in 1939. The fact that Juan Carlos I sits on the throne is a symbol of compromise between Franco and the forces of democracy – the restoration of the republic would have been a clearer symbol that the Franco era was over. Today, republicanism is a minority position in Spain, and support for the monarchy was helped considerably by the king’s statesmanlike performance on that winter night in 1981. The symbols of republicanism, such as the red-yellow-burgundy flag of the Second Republic, are still seen occasionally (most recently at the protests surrounding the suspension of firebrand anti-fascist judge Baltasar Garzón), and serve as a reminder of the more progressive Spain defeated in the Civil War and left unrestored by the messy compromise of the late 1970s. Thus, we are treated to the spectacle of punks and transsexuals being protected from fascist tyranny by an unelected aristocrat who owes his position to the fascists.

The character of Sara emerged as the true hero of the film. In a short space of time, she discovers the strength to leave the stifling environment of her middle-class, conservative, and devout family home. On the night of the gig and the coup, after a tearful phone call to her parents, she leaves El Calentito to have dinner at home, but is punched in the face by her mother as soon as she walks in the door. Perhaps this is supposed to be a metaphor – democrats making overtures to fascists, who then turn to violence as soon as things don’t go their way. The storyline of a young woman rebelling against her parents’ disapproval of her choice of cultural activity brings to mind such films as Bend It Like Beckham (a comparison which occurred to me when Sara’s little sister is prevented from playing soccer), but El Calentito managed to pull off that feel-good style while still interweaving some serious politics into the narrative.

El Calentito was a wonderful way of combining fiction with real historical drama, and of contrasting the underground counter-culture of post-Franco Madrid with the Catholic-fascist-nationalist side of Spain’s identity. It was sort of like the Civil War all over again, but this time with the republicans wearing spiky collars, The Ramones tops, and fishnet stockings. If only George Orwell could have been there to chronicle it.

So, as movie reviewers on TV say, ‘I gave it five stars, David’.