| La puta y la ballena | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Luis Puenzo |
| Written by | Ángeles González Sinde, Lucía Puenzo |
| Release date(s) | April 1, 2004 |
| Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
The Whore and the Whale (La puta y la ballena) is a 2004 Argentine drama film directed by Luis Puenzo. The film is about a Spanish writer who finds an old coffer with photographs of an Argentine man who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War.
Director Luis Puenzo takes viewers into a feminine universe that men rarely see. The story interweaves two parallel stories and times, present day and 1934 Patagonia. Vera (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a popular novelist, discovers an old coffer containing photos and personal papers belonging to an Argentine man, Emilio, who died during the Spanish Civil War. Many of the photos are of a woman, Lola, who is the person to whom many of the passionate, apologetic letters are addressed but never mailed.
As her curiosity grows about these star-crossed lovers, Vera is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes a mastectomy. While recovering in the hospital, by chance her elderly roommate turns out to be Matilde, one of the women in the dead soldier’s group photographs. She inspires Vera to fly to Patagonia to discover the truth.
Through flashbacks, we see the young Emilio (Leonardo Sbaraglia) as an ambitious photographer who meets and falls in love with a Buenos Aires showgirl, Lola (Merçè Llorens). They fly to a remote village in Patagonia and meet a menagerie of interesting characters in the local dance hall. The women in the brothel fascinate Lola, and Emilio, suffering from commitment-panic, decides to sell her to the owner of the establishment. He then leaves her to her fate.
Lola is shocked and angry, and she begins to identify with a beached whale on a nearby beach, trapped by the low tide and unable to escape back to the open sea. A year later, Emilio returns with a change of heart and attempts to buy her back, with tragic results.
Meanwhile in the present day, we watch Vera identify more and more with Lola’s sense of entrapment, because she learns her cancer has now spread and she needs to start chemotherapy. She delays her treatment so she can visit the old Patagonian brothel and interview the locals who still remember Emilio and Lola. We see her projecting herself into the past, mentally and eventually physically, interacting with the lovers and the trapped whale.
The use of female frontal nudity throughout the film is realistic considering the brothel and dance hall setting. One of the major themes underlying the journey taken by Vera’s character is her coming to terms with the loss of her breast. At the end of the film, her standing nude before of her lover for the first time is an act of personal courage that represents acceptance of her body as it is.
“This is a film that has to do more with dreams and poetry than with rational thought,” Puenzo stated in an interview when the film was released. “La Puta y la Ballena is poetic, sensitive, dreamy and metaphysical.”
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