Núria Espert

Six characters, contemporary archetypes of urban solitude, meet in an old apartment located in the city centre of Barcelona. An elderly married couple, her brother and three tenants: a blonde woman who gives French classes, a young security guard, an ex-football player and a young, pregnant South American girl. The old man, who was formerly a doorman at the opera and who likes to dress up in women's clothes, gets them all together and asks them to leave as he is going to die and wants to be alone for the last stage of his life. In this flat, incest, homosexuality and adultery are intertwined in the life of these characters whilst we simultaneously witness the passing of time in this Mediterranean city.

In order to get María Rosa, the woman he is deeply in love with, Marsal murders a moneylender hated by all the people and casts suspicion on his friend Andrés, the husband of his beloved María Rosa. After being imprisoned Andrés, Marsal becomes the protector of María Rosa while waiting for the development of events.

In order to prepare for her role as a certain well-known actress, a young woman has lengthy conversations with three different actresses who were good friends with the famous star. Emerging from these conversations are three equally different versions of the past and the events that shaped their lives and careers. This cinematic adaptation of a theatrical work is true to the original, but does not stray far from a theatrical rendering of the story.

Bizet's masterwork, Carmen, directed for stage by the Spanish actress Núria Espert. Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1989.

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

A domineering,reclusive, and ostentatiously pious widow in a small Spanish town keeps such close watch on her daughters that they are unable to have normal social lives. However, the eldest is allowed to become engaged to an unprincipled young man, primarily for the financial advantages it will bring the mother, Bernarda. Jealousy and envy ensues among the other daughters.