Cinema: "A Secret Life", thirty years hidden in Franco's Spain

Antonio de la Torre is Higinio in the film "A Secret Life" by Basque directors Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga, the story of a "mole" who remained hidden for thirty years during the post-Spanish Civil War .

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Text by: Isabelle Le Gonidec

6 min

On screens in France this Wednesday, October 28, a multi-award-winning film in Spain, at the San Sebastian Festival and at the Goyas, and a slice of history, that of the post-war period in Spain, in the privacy of a couple.

A Secret Life tells the story of a mole, “a topo” as they are called across the Pyrenees, those partisans of the Republic who sometimes remained hidden for decades for fear of Franco's repression.

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It's a closed-door for more than two hours in Higinio's hiding place, a small room set up behind a wall, sometimes with a nice escape into the kitchen or the master bedroom ... A closed-door with drawn curtains and doors closed.

Higinio is played by Andalusian comedian Antonio de la Torre, who had already been seen in a forced internee role when he played Pepe Mujica in Álvaro Brechner's film

, also discovered at the San Festival. Sebastian.

Higinio has just married Rosa.

When the Francoists take possession of his village, he refuses to leave like others to fight in the mountains.

He is hiding in their house.

We are in the last months of the civil war and the film tells of the confinement of Higinio, the way in which this one acts on his personality then on the relations in the couple.

He tells how to see the world in a hole in the wall, through a slit between two boards, from behind a barely ajar curtain alters the perception of things and produces a new confinement, mental this time.

We do not leave behind closed doors of the house, except during a very strong scene which comes to comfort him.

The couple decides to move in with Higinio's father, who has a bigger house and has set up a more comfortable hiding place for him.

Higinio, in disguise, comes out of his hole with great apprehension.

Arrested by gendarmes, he panics and gets lost in his own village.

He has lost his bearings, the outside has become dangerous.

Over the course of the film, we settle down with the couple in a sort of routine, the years go by, the spouses sew together and the earth continues to turn: Higinio's hopes of an overthrow of Franco by the Allies in 1945 are frustrated, Spain joins the UN.

In the village, through the curtains, we see the small square transforming, the adobe houses are whitewashed as on postcards, the village café has a terrace, a kindergarten is set up ... The radio tells us about the Spain of the fifties and sixties, with

.

The “sun boom” and the opening up to mass tourism are on the cover of the

magazines

that Rosa brings home.

The arrival of television marks the return to images of the outside world in the home.

The directors practice the art of the ellipse as in this moving sequence where Higinio takes the family photos to see how his son grows up and examines with a magnifying glass the details in the background, the houses, the faces, looking for a point of landmark, he who lost them all.

Living with fear

Higinio is a supporter of the Republic.

An ordinary man, not a top leader.

Moreover, we will not really know what he did, which condemns him to remain hidden, why his neighbor the informer has such hatred for him.

But he was arrested to be shot like a rabbit, he saw his companions die, he is afraid.

" 

 ."

This sentence (quoted by the directors) is from Jesús Torbado, co-author with Manuel Leguineche of the book

(Les moles).

They tell the story of several moles during Francoism.

It is also spoken in the film by a man whom Higinio killed.

The

gave rise to a literature and also to a documentary,

, directed by Manuel H. Martin and screened in 2012 at the San Sebastian Festival.

A film from which the directors were inspired.

Lives in negative in a world fond of revolutionary gestures and brilliant feats of arms.

Higinio's fear grows as the confinement lasts, contaminates his relationship with Rosa, with his son.

Rosa, played by the also Andalusian actress Belén Cuesta, also suffers this weight of confinement.

The actress also received the Goya 2020 for best female interpretation for this role.

Antonio de La Torre and Belén Cuesta play the roles of Higinio and Rosa in the film "A Secret Life" which hits screens on Wednesday 28 October.

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But humor is also invited into the story, as when Rosa recounts the news sequence projected before the film she has just seen and evokes the voice of the caudillo, a thin voice of "

 " in a small body, like that of a " 

 ".

Or when the house with the curtains always drawn hides the secret loves of the postman and a soldier and Higinio trades his silence for plates of pot-au-feu ...

In 1969, the Francoist government, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the war for the "liberation" of Spain, decides on a general amnesty, Julio Iglesias first way sings on the radio

.

“ 

 ” is the last chapter of the film.

But it is difficult to be free from fear.

Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga all three sign this latest feature film but they have been working together for several years, interchanging their roles.

Their first collective film was the documentary Lucio (2007) on Lucio Urtubia.

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