Bilbao (1978) The Psychotronic Homme Fatale

"A Spanish Sexploitation Noir Thriller"

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

Written and Directed by Bigas Luna (the Iberian Trilogy). 

José Juan Bigas Luna was an interior and industrial design artist. He broke Noir in the 1970s making short erotic films. His first feature film was Tatoo (1976). In 1978 this film, the more explicit Bilbao, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. He retires in the 1980s to paint, raise his daughters, grow organic vegetables, pigs and make wine.

From wiki:

"In 1990 the producer Andrés Vicente Gómez persuaded him to return to cinema and entrusted to him the direction of Las edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu), an erotic drama about a young woman exploring extreme sexual practices. This was a commercial success. Without abandoning his dedication to painting and photography, reflected in numerous exhibitions, he began the well-known "Iberian Trilogy" with Jamón Jamón ("Ham, Ham", 1992), Huevos de Oro ("Golden Balls", 1993) and La teta y la luna ("The Tit and the Moon", 1994). These films "explored the darkest depths of eroticism and stereotypical Spanish machismo."[ Obituary, The Guardian, Sunday 7 April 2013] Jamón Jamón, which launched the careers of both Javier Bardem and the 16-year-old Penélope Cruz was a major international success and won the Silver Lion at Venice in 1992.[ Obituary, The Guardian, Sunday 7 April 2013]

The Cinematography for Bilbao was by Pedro Aznar. Music by Iceberg. 

The film stars  Àngel Jové  as Leo, María Martín (Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Hellbenders) as María, Isabel Pisano as Bilbao. Jordi Torras as El tío,  Pepita Llunell as La tía, and Marta Molins as La prima.

Àngel Jové  as Leo

Isabel Pisano as Bilbao

María Martín as Maria

Story

A darkened bedroom lit by two lamps. A flash and the sounds of a camera shutter clicking mechanically. It looks like a woman sitting on the bed. A spool winding. A counter adding. We cut to Leo. He's walking down a station stair to a platform. He gets on the train that arrives. We get his profile as the train moves down the tracks. 

Cut to the neon of Barcelona's zona rosa. A strip club. Bilbao a raven haired beauty is dancing. Leo is watching. 

Leo, is obsessed. He obsessed with his teeth. He brushes them twice. In V.O. he tells us he needs a clean mouth. He wraps his writs in white tape. 

He's a collector, he collects images and takes pictures. He pastes the pictures on the blank white pages of an album. He tells us it's Monday he tells us the time. He tells us that he has to get his camera from Maria's room. It's curiously set up on a tripod. He unscrews the camera and tells us that he's tired of Maria and only wants Bilbao. 

Leo is obsessed with Bilbao, (also add in milk and pubic hair). 

He tells us in V.O. "There's something about her that I cannot find in anything I like. I want her."

He drives into Barcelona, He goes down into the subways telling us he loves the subterranean passageways. He loves it when they are full of people. On the train he tells us that he rips ads and images out of the newspaper that interest him.

He picks up his latest photos of Bilbao

We cut to Leo waiting across a street. He's watching Bilbao doing some hooking on the other side. When he sees she's alone he approaches. He tells us in V.O. that they reach an agreement and they head to her room. 

Bilbao starts to undress babbling on about some party. She asks Leo for money. He gives her some. In V.O. Leo tells us he likes to watch her on the bidet.

When Bilbao notices that Leo hasn't undressed she tells him that for 500 she will give him oral sex.

500

Leo pays Bilbao and she drops down to her knees. 

Leo tells us that her head never stopped moving and that just before the end that he held her head with both hands.

In V.O. "Her mouth is dark... makes me think of the mouth of a fish wolfing down a sausage. I'll get fish and sausage and take some pictures. I'll paste them in her album."

Cut to a fish store. Leo buys what looks like a large red mullet. Cut to a jar of pink pickled sausages. Leo buys one.

When Leo arrives to where he lives, Maria calls out to him after he comes in the door. We never know for sure who exactly Maria is. We are getting this story first person Leo. Is it his wife? Not sure. We find out later that Maria is sort of a kept woman that his uncle visits for sex once a week. But she's also taking care of Leo like a wife and she expects him to take care of her needs also. But again this is Leo's unreliable narrative. 

Leo drops his plastic bag with his fish and sausage and goes to Maria's room. She tells him that she doesn't like it when he's late. It's time for her injection. Maria rolls over on her side and Leo prepares a hypo. Is she some type of addict? Never explained.

After he gives her a shot in the ass, she asks for a glass of milk. We watch as Leo opens a milk bottle, pours some of into a sauce pan and lights the burner on the stove. When it's hot, he pours some milk into a glass with two teaspoons of sugar. He then spits in the milk and stirs it with the teaspoon. Nice guy. In V.O. he tells us that he "wonders if Maria spits in his food."

He brings her the milk. She wants him to stay for a while, she rubs between her legs wink, wink, but Leo is obsessed with Bilbao now and he gives her the brush. Leo picks up his food bag. He breaks off one end of the sausage he bought and lays it on the floor where Maria will see it. (later she serves it back to him for dinner, lol)

He takes out the photographs and circles Bilbao, it goes in the album. The he works on his latest conceptual art brainstorm... 

Leo pulls out the mullet and sticks what's left of the sausage in it's mouth. He lays it over a bidet and takes photos of the mullet with the sausage in its mouth from various angles. 

His representation of Bilbao giving him a blowjob. He pastes everything connected with her so far, the train ticket, the restaurant receipt, also in the album. 

Satisfied with his captures, Leo tosses the fish in the garbage. He turns on his projector and watches his favorite porn film. Which is a blonde woman who looks like a younger Maria wearing just pearls and  pantyhose playing with a hair dryer.

After movie time is over Leo eats dinner with Maria, who taunts him with the sausage he left her.

Later, we cut to Leo tailing the pimp who just picked up Bilbao from the club. We follow through the streets of Barcelona. 

The Pimp

The pimp drops Bilbao off on a street with other prostitutes. Leo stakes himself out watching Bilbao. When she gets a trick he follows them in his own car. When they pull into an alley. Leo parks and follows on foot. 

Streetwalking

Bilbao picks up a guy off the street. The trick walks her to his parked car. They get in and drive off. Leo follows them in his own car. When they pull into an alley. Leo parks on the street and and follows on foot. 

He watches the car. The man is sitting in the driver's seat. Bilbao's head bobs up and down above the cars sill as she gives her trick oral sex. 

At the end of the night Leo waits for the pimp to pick up Bilbao. When he does he follows their car to Bilbao's apartment house. He watches her walk up to the second floor outside deck and along that to her door. He now knows where Bilbao lives. 

Leo continues to follow Bilbao around Barcelona. On her days off he follows her shopping taking more pictures, of what she looks at, Buying the things she buys. 

He follows her to the club and watches her dance.

 

He listens to a song he found called Bilbao on his cassette player.

He peeps on Bilbo as she services her tricks, and stalks her days.

Leo starts to hatch a plan. His uncle owns property. One of his holdings is an old warehouse. Leo tells us that this is where his uncle put all of his things from his house. Right here, we know that obviously something happened in Leo's past to have that happen. 

In V.O. Leo tells us that the warehouse feels like the only place he can truly call mine. Leo buys a butane tank and a heater and begins to clean up an area set up furniture. He also slings a couple of ropes from the rafters. (there's a bit of foreshadowing of what he's got planned when you gloss over some of the images he's been snipping out of magazines). He tells us that he wants to see Bilbao floating. 

Maria and Leo ride the train to his uncle's slaughterhouse. We see pigs slaughtered and processed. It's pretty graphic. Maria gets the envelope with their money. Apparently, this is a family business and both Maria and Leo get cuts of the profits, except Leo complains in V.O. that Maria is in charge of Leo's money.  Maria and Leo eat with the relatives. Leo aunt asks him if he's tired when he says that he is his cousin shows him to a room. When Leo is out of hearing his uncle asks Maria how is he doing. So again the family obviously knows something's off with Leo.

It all goes Noirsville when Leo kidnaps Bilbao using chloroform, and brings her to the warehouse.

Noirsville

Bigas Lunas delves into Psycho territory with an effective gritty tale of an obsessed and alienated total nut job. 

This film is seen through the mind of a maniac. Women are really just reduced to objects in Leo's mind. Objects to own and possess. The Hitchcock connection is enforced by the soundtrack in spots. It sounds like its using (uncredited) some of Bernard Hermann score for Psycho.  

Both Àngel Jové and  María Martín give us a believable performances. Isabel Pisano looks mesmerizing, not only to Leo but to us the audience. 

According to IMDb trivia: 

Isabel Pisano had some problems with the scene in which Àngel Jové's character shaves her pubis. Pisano was warned about the sequence and that Bigas Luna would not accept any double, and the actress simply demanded that only the cameraman and the director be present at that moment. "I had to explain to her," said Bigas, "that a good part of the crew, especially the electricians, had been hired for four bucks and that if they had accepted it was because they knew that this sequence existed. She understood it perfectly and didn't put up any problem."

It will be interesting to explore more the films of Bigas Lunas.  This film is another Neo Noir that is not going to be for everyone. 7/10