The Red Squirrel

This film was well-received in its day, winning the Prix De Jeunesse and the Prix De La Publique at Cannes, a swag of other prizes and widespread critical acclaim.

The story tells of a jilted, suicidal rock singer who transfers his affections to a beautiful girl who he meets as a result of a motorbike accident that leaves her an amnesiac. He pretends to be her boyfriend and they head off to a camping resort called "The Red Squirrel" where he does his best to pull off his ruse as events conspire to unmask him.

The theme of sexually-charged, cat-and-mouse deception is quite engaging stuff, the kind of thing that Hitchcock did so well, and writer/director Medem peppers the telling with some winning non-linear stylistic embellishments. Even so, the parodying of the characteristic Spanish tendency to over-determined gender-based conventions, a semi-comedic kitsch approach that Almodovar has had so much success with, is less effectively handled. Thus, the repeated cutaways to Jay (Nancho Novo), a supposedly romantic figure fronting some U2-like rock band decked out in Amer-Indian accoutrements and singing some godawful song about his love for Elisa, is a motif which is repeated more times than it deserves to be, Medem treating his principal character with more indulgence than he deserves. Then there's the also-oft repeated squirrel material which has no discernible resonance within the human drama.

Perhaps all of this was meant to be regarded as squirm-inducing comedy (the scene in which Jay makes the motorbike rear up like a stallion then tells Lisa that she must in future do what he tells her is presumably a good example of this) but if so, Medem needed to be more critical and/or playful with his stereotypes rather than leaving them, as he does here, undeservedly intact.

 

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