7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
After the death of her mother, Tristana goes to live with her guardian, Don Lope, an older man who eventually breaks through his facade of respectability and seduces her. She repays him a hundred fold, preying on his jealousy and taunting him with perverse whimsies.
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, Franco Nero, Lola Gaos, Antonio CasasForeign | 100% |
Drama | 78% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
In the eternal war between the sexes, has there ever been a more cogent commentator than Luis Buñuel? Buñuel might not have exactly been a referee, at least on the surface, as his films often seemed to skewer men a bit more than women, though that thesis is pretty easily debunked in any number of films, with 1970’s Tristana being one of the best examples. One of the most fascinating things about Tristana is that while it goes about detailing the evolving (some might say devolving) relationship between Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) and her guardian cum lover Don Lope (Fernando Rey), the film actually touches upon a glut of other elements, things as disparate as the ephemeral nature of consciousness “knowing” the difference between dreams and waking, the moral turpitude of the Catholic church (and this was decades before the sad headlines of the last several years) and the general buffoonery of the bourgeoisie, all typical Buñuel subjects. Tristana had a long and rather tortured history and remained a forbidden fruit of sorts for Buñuel. The filmmaker had long been exiled from his native Spain to Mexico, and as early as 1962 or so had dreamed (no pun intended) of making Tristana the vehicle for an imagined celebrated return to his native country. Based on a novel by Benito Pérez Galdòs, the same author whose source novel provided the inspiration for Buñuel’s notorious but rather similar 1961 film Viridiana, Tristana seemed indeed to be a near perfect property for Buñuel to reestablish himself in Spain. What actually happened was years of disappointment and delay, capped by a rather vicious reaction by the fascistic powers that still dominated Spain as late as 1968 and 1969, when the film was already in the throes of pre-production. The rather ironic thing about all of this is that by “regular” Buñuel standards, Tristana is a rather restrained film, one that admittedly deals in some unseemly subject matter but which does so in a relatively restrained way. Buñuel was only too aware of his reputation as an intentional provocateur, but his poking and prodding here is often intimated rather than overt, which gives Tristana actually more of a wallop, albeit perhaps after the fact, when some of the film’s more subliminal elements have been given time to percolate in the viewer’s subconscious.
Tristana is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Sadly, Tristana was evidently not especially well curated over the years, and so Cohen Media Group needed to undertake a substantial restoration of this title. This restoration evidently was composited from source elements that included the negative as well as an undefined "positive" source (it's unclear whether this was a print or an interpositive). The results are largely commendable and in fact from a damage standpoint, Tristana is virtually blemish free. There are some minor registration discrepancies which may be tied back to the different source elements (and, perhaps, an inability to overcome differences in color timing), but the major issue some may have with this transfer is how dark it sometimes is, with understated contrast. It's frankly been years since I've seen Tristana theatrically, but the church scene toward the end of the film immediately struck me as being quite a bit darker than I remembered it, and in fact the brief snippet of that scene in the original French trailer included on this Blu-ray shows a much brighter ambience. Other than these probably niggling concerns, the rest of this high definition presentation is extremely laudable. Colors, while often muted (intentionally so), are accurate looking and nicely saturated. Fine detail is very good in close-ups, and the entire transfer features a very naturally filmic appearance that does not exhibit any egregious signs of digital sharpening or noise reduction.
Tristana features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks in both the original Spanish as well as an English dub. (The film was originally released in two different versions, Spanish and French, and it would have been fantastic to have had the French track here). As Deneuve mentions in her commentary, both she and Franco Nero were dubbed (some would say not especially well) in the Spanish version, so what might appear to be sync issues are in fact due to the fact that Deneuve was speaking French on set. The repurposed 5.1 tracks aren't especially immersive, but there are some nice foley effects which are smartly presented in the surround channels. Dialogue is resolutely anchored front and center, but fidelity is excellent. The piano cues (Tristana is a budding pianist) also sound great, and I'm happy to report that whoever fingered Chopin's notoriously difficult Revolutionary Etude is in fact really playing it, not merely "finger synching" to a prerecorded track.
Tristana traffics in a number of Buñuel's favorite subjects and tropes, but it does so in an unusual and quietly provocative manner. This is a film that seems simple, almost ridiculously so, on its surface but which reveals layer upon layer of resonances upon further rumination. Like the best of Buñuel's pieces, there's an almost revelatory dreamlike quality to much of the storytelling, and, again as with most Buñuel, Tristana is a singular viewing experience. This Blu-ray offers very good video and audio and the supplementary material is first rate. Highly recommended.
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