At first, I thought that The August Virgin (original title: La Virgen de Agosto) aspired to be, or at least wanted us to think that it was, a spiritual successor to “the comedies from the ’30s … these popular and apparently escapist comedies … more advanced in terms of traditions and morals, with those wonderful actresses … Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn.”
Why else would an early scene include a character — who’s never to be seen or heard from again — telling the heroine, Eva (Itsaso Arana), about an article he’s writing “on Stanley Cavell, a North American philosopher” who “became well-known with a book about comedies from the golden years of Hollywood”? I was like, ‘well, this is transparent.’
But then, not long after this, Eva runs into another short-lived character (albeit with a more substantial role) who is working on “an article on some exhibits … from some monastery museum in Palencia. [Sarcastically] A thrilling controversy that stems from the Confiscations of Mendizábal.”
Maybe I spoke too soon. Perhaps the film is actually about a protagonist who moves around in lower- to mid-echelon literary circles. But then she befriends a street performer, through whom we learn that Eva used to be an actress, so maybe it’s struggling artists in general that she surrounds herself with. But then this and that.
I guess I must be one of those cynics that the script takes exception to. I was wrong to try to label the movie, and I’m glad I was wrong because seldom do you find a film so reluctant to being pigeonholed. Going off on tangents is what it does, and therein lies its charm. It’s all over the place, and that place is Madrid in the dog days of summer — the first two weeks of August, to be precise.
If you must put a pin in it, though, The August Virgin is about what it said it would be even before it properly began; i.e., about a woman who stays in the city during a time where it is mostly empty except for tourists and a few other stragglers like herself.
Other than that, the story (such as it is) is slice-of-life as its sliciest; a day-by-day staycation of sorts where some days are short, some are long, and some bleed into the next one (in arguably the film’s most ingenious moment, a scene set at night cuts to an intertitle that says “August 4” and then immediately cuts back to the exact same shot — meaning, of course, it’s midnight).
Moreover, some days are thoroughly uneventful; then again, that nothing goes on is probably the most important thing that could transpire, as this downtime is the most effective way to convey that Eva is a real person like you or me, as opposed to a movie character to whom shit is constantly happening.
Similarly, for a dialogue-driven film (for lack of a better expression), the screenplay is wholly unpreoccupied with advancing the plot (not that there’s a plot per se). Characters don’t just exchange bits of exposition; they talk in a manner that sounds neither improvised nor rehearsed, and with no agenda other than to get to know each other or get reacquainted with one another.
And now the damn veggies. The August Virgin, leisurely paced without being soporific, is propelled by its own lack of momentum; thus, it’s counterintuitive to say that at some point it begins to lose steam. Nevertheless, there is a tipping point where inertia overcomes the proceedings, and the filmmakers keep going through the motions long past ‘short and sweet’ and well into ‘taking your sweet time.’
The ending is especially problematic. In a movie that, barring a couple of suspicious coincidences, unfolds as naturally and organically as life itself, the coda feels arbitrary, seemingly existing exclusively to justify the title. Makes me wish they had chosen a different title or wrapped things up a few days early.
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