If They Tell You I Fell
Director: Vicente Aranda
Genre: Drama, World cinema, Thriller
Year: 1989
Country: Spain
Language: Spanish Language
Starring: Jorge Sanz, Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas, Maria Botto, Guillermo Montesinos
If They Tell You I Fell (Spanish: Si te dicen que caí) is a 1989 Spanish film written and directed by Vicente Aranda, starring Jorge Sanz and Victoria Abril. The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same title by Catalan author Juan Marsé. Set mostly in the old quarter of 1940's Barcelona, the film centers in a young rag and bone merchant who falls in love with a prostitute. If They Tell You I Fell has an intricate narrative in which real and imagined stories blend in a crosswords style.
In the post Spanish Civil War years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell stories, known as "aventis" open-ended narratives drifting back and forth through time. Laced with horror and perversity, these tales mix war stories, local gossip, comic book characters, fantasy and real events. The "aventis" of this film are told in flashback in 1970, 1940, 1936 and the mid 1980s.
In 1970, Nito, a medical examiner assistant and sister Paulina, a nurse-nun (who grew up together, and now are co-workers in a hospital) identify the corpse of a couple who had drowned during a car accident. The dead man is Daniel Javaloyes "Java", one of the main characters of the "aventis" of their
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