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Consul of Sodom (The)

Country: Spain, Language: Spanish, 110 mins

Original Title

El Cónsul de Sodoma
  • Director: Sigfrid Monleón
  • Writer: Miguel Dalmau; Miguel Ángel Fernández
  • Producer: JoAnn Cabalda Banaga; Andrés Vicente Gómez

CGiii Comment

Jaime Gil de Biedma...an un-prolific poet, wealthy socialite and, perhaps, a gentleman with a penchant for the rough and ready, downtrodden boy.

This is Franco's Spain...from the perspective of the elite...from the perspective of a wealthy gay man who could luxuriate himself and his dalliances of privilege within a totalitarian dictatorship - without the money it would be a completely different story.

Ironically, Biedma was refused entry into the Spanish Communist Party because of his homosexual shenanigans...Lenin wouldn't have liked it...this probably saved him from arrest and a life of misery.

The film is a straightforward narrative of the man's life - there is a tendency, by the director, to romanticise - especially some of the more tawdry aspects of a life lived by the favours of prostitutes - the brief explicit scenes of erections are, bizarrely, out of place...there's no need to be so revealing. A very strange decision on behalf of the director.

It is an elegant piece of filmmaking...the saving grace is the lack of sentimentality - it could have easily gone overboard...that said, the downside is the lack of passion.

Aren't poets supposed to be passionate people? This was played - admirably by Mollà - with a detached nonchalance...it really did need passion.

Agustí Villaronga was meant to have directed this...now, that would have been a very different film indeed.

This is a fine film nevertheless...

"Until my mother dies, I am not queer...".

Truthful words for so many...


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

Fascinating journey through the life and work of the prestigious Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma, both marked by sexuality and eroticism. Charismatic and somewhat eccentric, brilliant intellectual with extraordinary sensitivity and member of Barcelona's 'gauche divine' in the 60s, Gil de Biedma liked to describe himself as a 'poet of experience' while he suffered dreadfully from the dichotomy strangling him: bourgeois and executive for a multinational by day, communist and homosexual poet by night.

Cast & Characters

Jordi Mollà as Jaime Gil de Biedma;
Blanca Suárez as Sandra;
Isak Férriz as Pep Madern;
Manolo Solo as Meler;
Àlex Brendemühl as Juan Marse;
Josep Linuesa as Carlos Barral;
Biel Durán as Enrique Vila-Matas;
Bimba Bosé as Bel;
Vicky Peña as Doña Luisa;
Carmen Conesa;
Raquel Gribler as Mercedes;
Marc Martínez as Victor Anglada;
Isabelle Stoffel as Colita;
Marco Morales as Johnny;
Juli Mira as Don Luis