THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS (LA NIÑA DE TUS OJOS)

Spain, 1998, 121 mins. 35mm print courtesy Lolafilms and Ventura Entertainment.
Directed by Fernando Trueba. Written by Rafael Azcona, Miguel Ángel Egea, Carlos López and David Trueba. Produced by Eduardo Campoy, Andrés Vicente Gómez and Cristina Huete. Original Music by Antoine Duhamel. Photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe. Edited by Carmen Frías. Production Design by Juan Botella and Gerardo Vera. Costume Design by Sonia Grande and Lala Huete. Principal Cast: Penélope Cruz (as Macarena Granada), Antonio Resines (Blas Fontiveros), Jorge Sanz (Julián Torralba), Rosa María Sardá (Rosa Rosales), Santiago Segura (Castillo), Loles León (Trini Morenos), Jesús Bonilla (Marco Bonilla), Neus Asensi (Lucia).

Introductory remarks by:
     Andrés Vicente Gómez, Founder and president, Lolafilms
     Chris Lynch, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, Ventura Entertainment and its Latin division, Studio Latino
     David Schwartz, Chief Curator of Film, American Museum of the Moving Image


About Lolafilms (www.lolafilms.com)


Without doubt, Lolafilms is Spain's most active and successful production company, having produced the films of virtually every Spanish director of renown of the last thirty years, including Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, Bigas Luna, Vicente Aranda, Gonzalo Súarez, Pilar Miró, Alex de la Iglesia, and Oscar winner Fernando Trueba.

In 1967, Andrés Vicente Gómez set up his own production company, but it was in 1981 that Lolafilms came into being. Eventually absorbing all of Gomez' previous productions, Lolafilms is also accredited with having produced over 100 titles under its own banner. Adding to the prizes won at Venice, Berlin, Montreal and San Sebastian, the Oscar, which Gómez won for Fernando Trueba's Belle Epoque, was his crowning achievement. At home, his annual winnings at the Goyas (Spain's equivalent to the Academy Awards) makes him the Spanish producer with the most national and international awards to his name. Gómez was further honored in 1998 by the Cannes Film Festival as one of the world's most important film industry professionals.

Enjoying a partnership with Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, which increased their stake in Lolafilms to 70%, Lolafilms is well set and in a secure position to finance large, internationally viable English and Spanish language films.

In addition to his extensive production activities, Andrés Vicente Gómez is President of the Media Business School, one of the European Union's centers of excellence in training and development under MEDIA II. He is also a founding member of the distinguished Paris-based think tank Le Club des Producteurs Européens, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Andrés Vicente Gómez was recently elected President of FIAPF, the International Federation of Film Producers Associations.

From a review by Jonathan Holland for Variety, November 6, 1998:


An ambitious, engaging big-budgeter about a Spanish film crew in the middle of Nazi Germany, The Girl of Your Dreams is Fernando Trueba's first Spanish-based feature since 1993's Oscar-winning, charm-drenched Belle Epoque. Though lacking the warmth of the earlier movie, this works like a dream at most levels. A satisfyingly watertight plot, energetic perfs from a high-profile cast (several from Epoque) and gold-plated craftsmanship and production values combine to unite a range of genres under a comic banner.

Released Nov. 13 in Spain with a record-breaking 200-plus prints, and a major marketing drive, pic looks set to be the domestic B.O. hit of the year. Offshore, however, the plethora of local refs could prove a stumbling block in Girl finding homes.

In 1938, a troupe of Spanish actors under director Blas (Antonio Resines) is in Berlin (recreated in Prague) to shoot "The Girl of Your Dreams," a cheesy Andalucian musical, as part of a reciprocal agreement between Hitler and Franco.

Script nicely characterizes the crew members in the enjoyable first half-hour. They include gutsy, golden-hearted singer Macarena Granada (Penélope Cruz, taking a worthy stab at an Andalucian accent), who is having an on-off relationship with Blas; Fascist leading man Julian Torralba (Jorge Sanz), who's immediately targeted by a gay Nazi thesp; gay art director Castillo (an uncommonly restrained Santiago Segura), and alcoholic ex-femme fatale Rosa Rosales (Rosa Maria Sarda). There is some nice ironic cross-cultural humor-Spanish-speaking auds will love hearing a copla sung in German.

Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels (Johannes Silberschneider) falls for Macarena and promises everything at his disposal; this includes supplying a cast of Jewish extras (as Nazis don't look Spanish enough) and buying a mansion for Macarena. Blas' main commitment is to his film-optimistically, he hopes the crew has left politics behind in Spain-while Macarena, increasingly uneasy about Goebbels' designs on her, is more worried about her own safety.

She, meanwhile, falls for one of the extras, hunky Russian Jew Leo (Karel Dobry). Realizing that, when the shoot ends, Leo will be sent to a concentration camp, Macarena decides to help him escape. The stage is set for a conclusion which neatly blends traditional farce with the easy-to-swallow moral that saving human lives is more important than making movies.

Pic skillfully traverses a wide range of moods, from large-scale set pieces-the production design lovingly recreates Berlin's legendary UFA studios-to scenes of low-lit intimacy charting the breakup of the Macarena/Blas relationship. Wisely from a commercial point of view, but less so artistically, the script generally sidesteps confronting any of the troubling themes it raises, preferring to let the strong, basically comic plot unravel…

Trueba also shuns any film-within-film games, apart from one affecting sequence in which Macarena, after playing a death scene badly, hears her father has died and has to play it again. If confirmation is still needed that Cruz is an actress first and a pretty face second, then here it is.

Other perfs are also strong, particularly from the low-key Resines, trying to keep both the crew and his Nazi hosts happy, and from Silberschneider as Goebbels, a complex role which combines fall-guy comedy with menace…