Benito Pérez Galdós - Readers both new to this haunting tale and those already familiar with the exquisite 1970 Luis Buñuel film adaptation should rejoice at the arrival of this brilliant new translation of a mesmerizing novel from Galdós, who is often considered the greatest Spanish writer after Cervantes

Benito Pérez Galdós, Tristana. Trans. by Margaret Jull Costa. NYRB Classics, 2014.



Don Lope is a Don Juan, an aging but still effective predator on the opposite sex. He is also charming and generous, unhesitatingly contributing the better part of his fortune to pay off a friend’s debts, kindly assuming responsibility for the friend’s orphaned daughter, lovely Tristana. Don Lope takes her into his house and before long he takes her to bed.
It’s an arrangement that Tristana accepts more or less unquestioningly— that is, until she meets the handsome young painter Horacio. Then she actively rebels, sets out to educate herself, reveals tremendous talents, and soon surpasses her lover in her open defiance of convention. One thing is for sure: Tristana will be her own woman.
And when it counts Don Lope will be there for her.
Benito Pérez Galdós, one of the most sophisticated and delightful of the great European novelists, was a clear-eyed, compassionate, and not-a-little amused observer of the confusions, delusions, misrepresentations, and perversions of the mind and heart. He is the unsurpassed chronicler of the reality show called real life.

Tristana is a peach. An utterly delicious novel, even better than the Buñuel film.—Phillip Lopate


Galdós was the great novelist of Madrid, chronicling bourgeois, urban manners with a clarity and understanding critics have found comparable to that of Dickens, Balzac and Flaubert.
—Raymund A. Paredes

Pérez Galdós is one of the treasures of 19th-century Spanish fiction.—William Ferguson


Pérez Galdos is the supreme Spanish novelist of the 19th century. His scores of novels are rightly compared with the work of Balzac and Dickens who were his masters, and even with Tolsoy’s…. The secret of the gift of Galdos lies, I think, in his timing, his leisurely precision and above all in his ear for dialogue…—V.S. Pritchett

[Pérez Galdós’s] prophetic gift for singling out those issues that were bound to transcend and outlast his own milieu was equaled only by his knack for keeping them controversial and alive in his fiction by refusing to take a clear-cut position on them.—Hispanic Review

A strong entry for a college course on feminism and literature, this is too contrived and didactic to do well outside the world of required reading."
This love triangle presents a distinctive heroine but more archaic melodrama than those outside academia are likely to enjoy.
A major 19th-century (1843-1920) Spanish writer, Galdós (Misericordia, 2014, etc.) is often ranked second only to Cervantes. This 1892 novel may be familiar from the 1970 Luis Buñuel film of the same name. Set in Madrid, the story begins shortly after the title character is taken in as a teen orphan by an aging Don Lope as he is winding down from years of heedless seduction. She succumbs to his practiced charms and becomes his last great conquest but by age 21 recognizes the limitations of life as a mistress. A chance encounter leads her into a passionate and rather gawky affair with a young painter named Horacio. She refuses, though, to accept another set of fetters. She casts about for a way to keep her lover while becoming independent and productive, mulling at different times painting, music and acting. Galdós’ liberal leanings shape a female iconoclast in the land of machismo. He lays it on thick by making Don Lope an unlikely Lothario of taste, intelligence and Old World gallantry, if not chivalry—there is much of Don Quixote in him without the delusions and innocence. Horacio plays the perfect shallow romantic hero: a handsome artist with money, a house on the coast, a great tan and a bottomless patience for Tristana’s restless ambition. When the young lovers must endure a period of separation, the reader must endure many pages of letters filled with pet names, cute puns and painless torments. Galdós is most interesting and least predictable in the psychological shifts and byplay between Don Lope and Tristana, but the book would need a lot more of that to mute the emotional megaphone of the rest.
A strong entry for a college course on feminism and literature, this is too contrived and didactic to do well outside the world of required reading. - Kirkus Reviews

Readers both new to this haunting tale and those already familiar with the exquisite 1970 Luis Buñuel film adaptation (starring Catherine Deneuve) should rejoice at the arrival of this brilliant new translation of a mesmerizing novel from Galdós, who is often considered the greatest Spanish writer after Cervantes. After a painfully sheltered childhood and the death of both of her parents, Tristana is taken in by the aging Don Lope, who, in his constant, if misguided, quest for “honor,” has paid off Tristana’s father’s enormous debts and promised her dying mother to look after the young, fragile woman. Though the town presumes them as kin, “after only two months, he had added her to his very long list of victories over innocence.” Don Lope keeps the girl like a prisoner, establishing his dominance by proclaiming, “I regard you as both wife and daughter, as it suits me.” But, before long, the housekeeper Saturna takes pity on Tristana and begins taking her out for surreptitious walks around Madrid. On such an outing, Tristana meets Horacio, a young painter, and the two fall instantly, madly in love; they later swap letters and swear eternal devotion to each another. Intense passion and the impossibility of their relationship fill most of the book, bringing to light Tristana’s somewhat revolutionary opinions on marriage, independence, and the oppression of women. When fate hands Tristana yet another disastrous turn of events, however, her expectations for both men leads to a heartbreaking fate. - Publishers Weekly

Chronologically and thematically, Tristana falls neatly between Dickens’s Bleak House, and Nabokov’s Lolita. When her mother dies Tristana Reluz goes to live with her parents’ friend and benefactor, Don Lope Garrido. He seduces the young woman, and although life with him is “boring and repugnant,” she has no husband, parents, or practical skills, and therefore no other options. Nonetheless, Tristana finds a boyfriend and tries to figure out how to support herself until a sudden sickness overtakes her. Like Dickens’s Esther Summerson, Tristana’s appearance is dramatically altered by illness. Many 19th century novels end with a woman’s fall, others end with her tragic illness, but Tristana perseveres. And if Tristana is no mere victim, Don Lope is no mere villain either; Galdós has conjured up a blood-and-marrow humanist where cardboard lechers usually suffice. Neither Tristana nor Don Lope is willing to submit to a conventional life, and Galdós doesn’t punish them for that. Instead he permits them each a measure of peace more satisfying than happier endings.
 - Erin Gilbert

History and literature are fraught with men of insatiable appetites, who use their gifts of seduction to charm their way into many a bedroom: Casanova, Lord Byron, Don Juan, the list goes on. In Tristana, Benito Pérez Galdós' masterful 1892 novel — newly reissued by NYRB Classics in a translation by Margaret Jull Costa — we meet a man of Byronic decadence: Don Lope, an aging lover whose sexual conquests know no bounds. He's a man of contradictory ideals, who's developed a complex and manufactured morality that lets him prey on the unfortunate while still maintaining a sense of himself as a gentleman. Poetry and philosophy at its crux, the novel is a bold and telling illustration of 19th century Spain.
The Tristana of the title is a beautiful orphan whose family debts have been paid by the dubiously gallant Don Lope. Before long, he falls for her, and applies, as he puts it, "the law of love." Three times Tristana's age, the old wretch takes her captive and makes her his property; Tristana, not knowing any better, puts up with it.
Eventually, though, she comes to her senses, and in her intimate conversations with the house maid Saturna, Tristana begins to voice her desire to be free, to be the property of no man. Perhaps she'll write, paint, learn other languages. In her mind, the possibilities are truly endless — and when she meets the young, strapping painter Horacio, everything changes. Having never been so taken aback by anyone, she pleads with Saturna to steer her right: "Advise me, guide me. I don't know about these things." Tristana and Horacio, enamored of one another, soon begin exchanging letters and meeting for walks.
Don Lope suspects that Tristana is seeing someone, which she denies profusely. When — after much interrogation — she finally comes clean concerning her relationship with Horacio, their lives take on a new rhythm. But then Tristana falls gravely ill, the prospect of happiness becomes more of an illusion, and desperate choices must be made.
Pérez Galdós has long been revered as one of the greatest European novelists, and Tristana leaves us with little doubt as to why. His treatment of Don Lope is a testament to his overwhelming ability as an architect of characters: While he establishes early on that the old predator operates out of a fairly illogical moral center, he doesn't neglect Don Lope's innate sense of charity and altruism — a certain goodness that makes it more difficult to dismiss the man completely. Pérez Galdós leaves it up to the reader to decide just what to make of Don Lope and his predilections. Is he an entirely bad person? Are any of us righteous enough to judge him?
Even more interesting is the way Pérez Galdós writes about women, with veiled rants about their mistreatment that border on modern feminism. His description of Tristana's mental enslavement is stunning, making much of the sheer wrongness without getting preachy. Though not overtly political, Pérez Galdós offers a glimpse at the limitations placed on women in an era when opportunities were scarce and the injustices were plenty.
Told in sophisticated yet enveloping prose, Tristana is a treasure that should not be overlooked. Pérez Galdós barely breaks a sweat as he weaves a tale of intelligence and emotional richness comparable to the works of Charles Dickens and Gustave Flaubert. And while the pace of the story is expertly controlled, there is an urgency to each sentence, paragraph, page. At its heart, it's about how we should hurry up and become who we are. Or else. - Juan Vidal

Tristana from Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920) is a subversive novel that takes a sly look at the power structure in the relationships of its three main characters: Don Lope, an aging, dissolute roué, his ‘ward,’ the beautiful Tristana, and the handsome, wealthy young man she falls in love with, a painter named Horacio. This is the sort of novel guaranteed to elicit a range of responses from its readers, and that would make this relatively short book, clocking in at just under 200 pages, a great choice for book groups who’d like to sink their teeth into complex characterisations and slippery morality.
When the book opens, one of the main characters Don Lope Garrido, now well past his prime, is living in “cheap plebian rooms, with, as noisy neighbors, a tavern, a café, a shop selling milk fresh from a goat, and a narrow inner courtyard with numbered rooms.”  That wonderful quote creates a cacophony of sounds surrounding Don Lope as he emerges from his surroundings as a rather slippery character:
The first time I encountered this gentleman and observed his proud, soldierly bearing, like a figure in a Velázquez painting of one of Spain’s regiments in Flanders, I was informed that his name was Don Lope de Sosa, a name with more than a whiff of the theatre about it and worthy of a character in one of those short tales you find in books on rhetoric; and, that, indeed was the name given to him by some of his more unsavoury friends; he, however, answered to Don Lope Garrido. In time, I discovered that the name on his baptismal certificate was Don Juan López Garrido; so that sonorous Don Lope must have been his own invention, like a lovely ornament intended to embellish his person; and the name so suited the firm, noble lines of his lean face, his slim, erect body, his slightly hooked nose, his clear brow and lively eyes, his greying moustache and neat, provocative goatee beard, that he really could not have been called anything else. One had no alternative but to call him Don Lope.
Even though Don Lope Garrido (and the name is explained in the footnotes) is 57, it’s still possible to see this dapper aging womanizer as the dangerous threat he used to be. Some of the measures he takes to hang onto the shadow of his vigour are laughable.
The age of this excellent gentleman, in terms of the figure he gave whenever the subject came up, was a number as impossible to verify as the time on a broken clock, whose hands refuse to move. He had stuck fast at forty-nine, as if an instinctive terror of the number fifty had halted him on the much feared boundary of the half century.
He’s spent his lifetime pursing women while evading the consequences of his actions, but now living on an “ever-decreasing income,” he floats on his past glory as a supreme seducer of women with a manufactured morality “which, although it seemed to have sprung solely from him, was, in fact, an amalgamation in his mind of the ideas floating around in the metaphysical atmosphere of the age, like invisible bacteria.” The situation with Tristana is perfect for Don Lope. She’s beautiful, innocent enough to fall for his manipulative arguments and as his ward, she’s entirely dependent upon him.
Don Lope Garrido–just to whet  your appetite–was  a skilled strategist in the war of love and prided himself on having stormed more bastions of virtue and captured more strongholds of chastity that he had hairs on his head. True, he was somewhat spent now and not fit for very much, but he could never quite give up that saucy hobby of his, and whenever he passed a pretty woman, or even a plain one he would draw himself up and, albeit with no evil intentions, shot her a meaningful glance, more paternal than mischievous, as if to say: ‘You had a very narrow escape! Think yourself lucky you weren’t born twenty years earlier.’
So there, in a few quotes, is a lot of information about Don Lope, who, IMO is the main character of the book–in spite of the fact that its title is the name of Don Lope’s ‘ward’ Tristana. The term ‘ward’ is applied sarcastically as beautiful, young Tristana, who fell initially into Don Lope’s power through the poverty of her parents and Don Lope’s generosity, is her guardian’s mistress.  Locals theorize that Tristana is Don Lope’s niece or even his daughter (“there were even some who claimed to have heard her say ‘papa’, just like one of those talking dolls”), but in time  it becomes clear that “she was nothing […] an item of furniture or an article of clothing, with no one to dispute his ownership.” Tristana, who has a great deal more power than she realizes (or is able to exercise) is, however, the celestial body that the other two main characters, Don Lope and Horacio orbit. Too young and naïve to initially understand her vulnerability, she grasps her situation in her guardian’s home too late, and when she begins to put up resistance to Don Lope’s despotic power, he, a lifetime seducer of women, unscrupulously checkmates her at every point.
The domestic situation in Don Lope’s house is at once bizarre and pathological, and gradually as the story develops we see how Tristana was initially under Don Lope’s thumb and how she now chafes under his control. Don Lope, once the great seducer, entranced women with his words, his wiles and his caresses, but now he alternates various roles to keep his control on Tristana, his “last and, therefore, dearest trophy,” so in one moment, he sits her on his knee and fondles her, and in the next he’s her caring, but authoritative parent who sends her to her room. This leaves Tristana, who’s a neophyte when it comes to manipulation, always one step behind her aging lover/protector/guardian, and while she knows she’s being manipulated and used, she can’t ever quite challenge the various arguments that seasoned seducer Don Lope sends her way. As a result, her resentment and desire for freedom grows, and then she meets Horacio, a young painter who understands her plight….
There were so many ways this novel could have ended, but Benito Pérez Galdós delicately constructs the most subversive route to his story’s conclusion. There’s love and tragedy but there’s also irony, domestic comedy and the massive egos of two of the three main characters, and that’s as much of the plot as I’m prepared to discuss.
A section of the novel takes the form of an epistolary as mushy love letters pass back and forth between Tristana and Horacio. At this juncture the novel lost some of its momentum, and yet at the same time, these letters were essential to question the nature and authenticity of love while showing how the three characters inhabit necessary roles for each other. Tristana and Don Lope eventually become almost caricatures of themselves while Horacio, always a lesser player in the game, does not.
Balzac was an enormous influence on Galdós and you can see this in Tristana in the way the author gently dismantles the layers of his characters with each new event as jealousy, rivalry, and tragedy challenge the triangular relationship between Don Lope, Tristana and Horacio. In this parable of power, self-deceit and ego, who will emerge the victor? And what will victory look like? Don Lope, the seducer, Tristana, his victim, and Horacio the lover begin by inhabiting the lives stock characters, but as the tale continues and the layers of this tale unfold, Galdós does not let his reader make easy moral judgments. - swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/tristana-by-benito-perez-galdos/


Tristana begins with Don Lope, a Lothario now past his prime, vainly still admitting only to being forty-nine even as he has by now reached his late fifties. What wealth he had has dissipated over the years as well -- but in part also because of a fundamental generosity that saw him give a great deal in aid of a friend who went to prison. When that friend died, and his wife followed him shortly later, Don Lope was left with their daughter, Tristana, barely in her twenties; he generously took her in -- but less generously also quickly took advantage of her. He simply has no moral compass when it comes to seduction -- he: "accepted neither guilt nor responsibility when it came to anything involving the ladies" -- and when one practically falls into his lap like this ....
       It makes for an odd domestic situation, however: as Tristana at one point tries to explain the relationship:
I am not married to my husband, I mean, my papa, I mean to that man ...
       Not surprisingly, Tristana falls for a younger man, the talented painter Horacio Díaz. He brings out the best in her: while she displays not the least talents for the sort of domestic work usually assigned women, like running a household, it turns out she's bright and quick to pick up everything from languages to mastery of various arts. A great talent -- and useful, too, since she warns Horacio that she will not be a kept woman, indeed refuses even to become a wife:
My ambition is to not have to depend on anyone, not even on the man I adore. I don't want to be his mistress -- so undignified -- or a woman maintained by a few men purely for their amusement, like a hunting dog; nor do I want the man of my dreams to become a husband. I see no happiness in marriage. To put it in my own words, I want to be married to myself and to be my own head of the household.
       Given her talents, she would seem to have the opportunity to take such a path, uncertain only what she wants to do -- become a painter ? an actress ? The men in her life -- Horacio and Don Lope -- have different ideas (or at least hopes), preferring to see her more traditionally subservient at their side, but they limit how far they impose their will on her. Each, in his own way, proves supportive.
       It is not these two men, or even society, that ultimately holds back Tristana, but a more prosaic everyday tragedy. In losing part of herself, she also loses what enthusiasm she had, and almost all that had flourished in her when she saw an opportunity of independent life. She winds up a literally and figuratively broken woman. The two men continue to be supportive, after a fashion -- but now very much prioritizing their self-interest. The result is unsurprising -- tragic, if there weren't such a sense of inevitability to it, the closing lines less cruel than necessarily resigned, as each is to their fate:
Were they happy, the two of them ? Perhaps. 
       Pérez Galdós handles his characters beautifully. Tristana is the one who undergoes the most transformations, from near-uncomprehending youth who is taken advantage of to one who adapts to the more limited paths this then leaves open to her, then blossoming when she finds love and, more importantly, recognizes her own incredible talents -- only then to collapse again into a much more limited role, accepting a fate nature (and only secondarily society) imposes on her.
       Don Lope is a cad, but he really does mean well, too, and is self-sacrificing, when need be. As Tristana notes:
he's a strange mixture of things, a monstrous combination of good qualities and horrible defects, he has two consciences, one very pure and noble in certain respects, the otehr like a mudhole; and he chooses which to apply depending on the circumstances; he puts them on and off like shirts.
       Besotted Horacio, who can't quite rid himself of his image of what the perfect female companion should be like -- someone slightly more subservient that Tristana keeps telling him she is willing to be -- is a convincing young lover -- as is how he extricates himself from the situation.
       Some of what happens in Tristana is perhaps too hurriedly dealt with or passed over -- it is a novel that could well have done with being fleshed out more, beginning with Tristana becoming part of Don Lope's household -- which is all the more noticeable because Pérez Galdós is so good in his focused detail-work, such as Tristana's operation. or her letters to her beloved. Perhaps Pérez Galdós felt he could only go so far in his daring portrayal of such a (briefly) independent-minded and capable woman, leaving a certain sketchy quality to aspects of it. It still makes for a powerful work, all the more impressive for how his flawed characters nevertheless have redeeming qualities -- and yet nothing can redeem cruel fate. - M.A.Orthofer

Tristana: Buñuel’s Film and Galdós' Novel: A Case Study in the Relation Between Literature and Film by Colin Partridge (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995)
I was able to obtain this book through an interlibrary loan—good copies are hard to find under $150. Colin Partridge provides a translation of the novel along with essays on the novel and Buñel’s movie. The focus of this post will be on one of the main characters of the novel but first a very quick synopsis of the novel. Don Lope, an aging lecher, becomes Tristana’s guardian after the death of her parents. He becomes her lover, awakening a sense of independence and rebelliousness in the girl. She falls in love with a painter, Horacio, who leaves Madrid to follow his sick aunt to the coast for the winter. The relationship continues in letters, and in these letters Tristana’s desire for independence drives her burgeoning intellect and curiosity. Tristana notices a pain in her leg which worsens, awakening Don Lope’s sense of responsibility for his ward. The leg worsens and has to be amputated, leaving Tristana a dependent cripple. Her desire for independence and learning decreases until she discovers an aptitude and interest in music. During her convalescence Horacio marries another woman. Don Lope’s finances worsen as he takes care of Tristana, but his relatives agree to bail him out if he will marry his ward. They marry, move to the suburbs, and experience something looking like happiness together.
The joy of the novel lies in the telling as well as the complexity and ambiguity lying behind the telling. Don Juan López Garrido shares the center of the novel with the titular character. There are several literary references in the name, providing an ambiguous literary mix of amorous reputation, noble spirit, and a common surname. He began calling himself Don Lope, “his own invention, which he used like an expensive cosmetic to enhance his personality.” Later in the novel Tristana and the house servant, Saturna, call him Don Lepe. Even the narrator begins calling by that name. From the notes—“The pun in the name-change infers that Don Lope is now the malicious devil of the Christian belief system.”
Even with Don Lope’s physical decline (he’s 57 when the novel begins), his wiles and experience are overwhelming for a ‘captive’ Tristana supposed to be under his care. His outlook carries more than just a little wistfulness at his faded prowess, though:
Now it must be stated at once, to whet the appetite, that Don Lope Garrido had once been a redoubtable strategist in amorous jousts and he prided himself on having assaulted more towers of virtue and overcome more ramparts of honor than he had hairs on his head. Although tired now and in his declining years, he couldn’t reject his lifelong waywardness whenever he met pretty women (and some who were not so pretty), he adopted a strategic stance and, with no malice whatsoever, directed meaningful looks, which now were more paternal than seductive, as if here saying to them: “You’ve been lucky to escape, my dears! You can thank God you weren’t born twenty years earlier. You must protect yourselves against those who can do today what I did formerly; but, if you really want my opinion, I think there’s no one today who can do what I did then. Nowadays, you won’t find young fellows, either self-proclaimed gallants or mature men who know what to do with a beautiful woman.”
Don Lope’s lechery coexists with an extreme sense of honor. He helps his friends regardless of the cost to himself. Tristana falls under his care after her parents’ deaths because he bailed them out, going deeper into poverty for his chivalric code to help friends. His code only overlaps with his lechery when it comes to friends—their wives are off limits. The code becomes quixotic through the extremes he takes it and the irony in its selective application. Don Lope’s code has no basis in social institutions since he doesn’t believe in the laws of man or God. His expertise regarding duels, as a participant and officiator, emphasizes his strong sense of honor on these points. His physical decline becomes mirrored in a moral decline, where chivalry becomes perverted for sexual ends.
Included in Don Lope’s distaste of social institutions is a lifelong distaste for marriage. His sexual conquests occur outside his home. This changes after taking Tristana in as his ward and seducing her. She is the exception to his rules, erasing the lines between his chivalric code and sexual desire and it shows in the mixed messages he feels and sends to her. Is he a father figure or her lover? In trying to have it both ways, alternating between the roles, the ambiguity of his character is highlighted.
Don Lope takes pride in his role of a lover, dismissing the capabilities in the men of Tristana’s generation. Yet his pride awakens an independence and determination in Tristana that effectively drives her into the arms of a lover. The ambiguity between Don Lope’s roles resolves only through Tristana’s illness and the amputation of her leg. His desire for control of her does not lessen, though, and he easily marginalizes the lover. Although it helps that the lover marginalizes himself. After all the twists of fate and changing dynamics, Don Lope and Tristana marry and appear happy. Or at least some version of happy.
In Colin Partridge’s essay on the novel he states “Throughout this grim mannered comedy Don Lope deploys two devices to achieve his strategic objectives: his skill with words and his ease in manipulating social rituals.” I would add a third device to his advantage, or maybe the second one is meant to include it—the vulnerability and lack of independence of women in Spanish society. More on this in the post on Tristana. - bookcents.blogspot.com/2013/01/tristana-by-benito-perez-galdos-don-lepe.html

Critic's Pick: 'Tristana' a lesson in rule breaking
Luis Buñuel's 1970 film starring Catherine Deneuve has been remastered and stands as a testament to his daring as a filmmaker.
Sometimes it seems as if the only collective memory of the great Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel is that startling close-up of a razor slicing through an eye. It was in "Un Chien Andalou," his first film, a collaboration with another legendary Spanish surrealist, Salvador Dali. Released in 1929 and only 16 minutes long, the images — bizarre and dangerous — still rattle the sensibility.
The shot was seminal to be sure, but it is a shame that for many in this country, it's the one that defines Buñuel's long, rebellious and prolific career.
Which makes the arrival of the remastered "Tristana" starring Catherine Deneuve, Franco Nero and Fernando Rey such a rare treat. In a special one-week run at the Nuart Theatre beginning Friday, it offers the chance to remember the range of one of cinema's true auteurs.
Buñuel's groundbreaking — and rule breaking — wasn't just visual. The stories he chose, like this one he and Julio Alejandro adapted from the Benito Perez Galdos novel, were just as often on a razor's edge. The deepest cuts usually saved for the bourgeois.
The film, which came out in 1970 after a censorship battle with the Franco regime, catches — and releases — all the tension of shifting sexual mores. You can almost sense the director's pleasure in taking apart the duplicities of a patriarchal Spanish society, the long-standing sexual double standard for men and one young woman's revolt against convention. No one's hands are clean.
It is a love story of sorts that begins in death. Tristana is not a child, but she is not married either, so after her mother's funeral, she's become the ward of a nobleman, Don Lope (Rey). He's a notorious ladies man, and having a beautiful young woman under his roof is too much temptation. Any wall of propriety soon breaks down, and he brings her into his bed.
If you want to see the difference between acquiescence and love, simply watch Tristana's face. As she so often is, Deneuve is a marvel moving from carefree girl to used woman.
Don Lope is overbearing as well as old and increasingly fearful of losing her. As his possessiveness rises, so does her discontent. There are dreams that involve Don Lope's not-too-neatly severed head that are classic Buñuel. The director is also playing with the idea of self-image and in that Tristana will pay a price for her beauty.
As so often happens at times like these, a young man comes into the picture. Horacio (Nero) is an artist Tristana stumbles across on one of her walks through the city. He wants to paint her. With those legendary cheekbones, who wouldn't? Soon enough Tristana is having to make a choice between the man of means and the man she loves.
All the intrigue of Tristana and Don Lope's debates about love, commitment and freedom, all of her flirtations with Horacio exist in Buñuel's ever-shifting palette. As she is increasingly repelled by the old man, the quarters are tight; there is literally no room for her to move. In those few afternoons she is able to escape him, the stone streets she wanders are beautifully empty and serene, as if she is still contemplating the details of her life.
The film comes a few years after Buñuel's "Belle de Jour," which arguably is the movie that turned Deneuve into an international movie star. At this point, Nero is already very much the heartthrob, his breakthrough having come in 1966's classic spaghetti western "Django," a moment Quentin Tarantino paid homage to with a Nero cameo in his "Django Unchained."
But it is between the actress and the old horse portrayed by Rey that the serious sparks fly. Bitterness, regret, revenge get the best of love.
For all of his shock, Buñuel could be unusually subtle with color and so it was in "Tristana." Time had distorted the few remaining prints, but the restoration has brought them back — beautiful, muted, restrained, like the woman Tristana could never manage to be. - Betsy Sharkey