La niña de tus ojos

In 1938 the Spanish Civil War had not yet died down completely, so a film crew from Madrid decides to film the Andalusian musical ‘The Girl of your Dreams’ in the Berlin UFA Studios. This results in a tragi-comic adventure with a large dose of romance as the film crew makes its way from the frying pan into the fire and has a foretaste of the horrors awaiting Europe. Those who can see resonances of Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be and who recognise Casablanca in the finale know their classics, just like Trueba. To enjoy the folksy humour with which fascist film artists in Nazi Germany are portrayed in this film one needs to be flexible. A feeling for camp helps and has to be easy to generate when Hanna Schygulla makes her entrance as the man-eater Magda Goebbels. The real star of the film is Penélope Cruz, a delicious actress, as in Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre.