Okay, I officially do not get Buñuel films. Apparently this was the start of his second great phase, which include the other Buñuel film we've seen, The Exterminating Angel, which was surreal in a way this certainly wasn't, so I didn't get this one in a way I didn't not get that one (if you follow me), but still. I mean, the story is straightforward enough. Viridiana is a beautiful young woman (Silvia Pinal)
training to be a nun and is just about to take her vows when her uncle (Don Jaime, who has paid for her education but kept his distance) calls for her to visit him in his rambling estate. She doesn't want to go but is pressured into it by the mother superior. When she arrives she bluntly tells her uncle that she feels no affection for him because he has never been in her life, but she is quite charmed by the estate, which has run to seed, and which appears to have only two servants - Ramona, a woman not much older than Viridiana but with a small (naughty) daughter, Rita, and Moncho, an elderly and very crabby farm hand. Viridiana seems quite happy there at first, and warms to her uncle, but is still determined to leave to take her vows. The only strange occurrence is when she sleepwalks one night and gathers ashes from the grate and dumps them on his bed, something about which she is mortified the next day. On the night before she is to depart he persuades her to put on the wedding dress
that her aunt (whom she greatly resembles) wore on her wedding night, the same night she died suddenly, breaking Don Jaime's heart and causing him to withdraw from the world and let his estate run amok. Then he proposes to her, an act that repulses her. He gets Ramona to drug her coffee, and they carry her to her room, and, after dismissing Ramona, Don Jaime tries to rape her but cannot bring himself to. However, the next day he tells her that he has
and that therefore she can't become a nun so she might as well stay. Unsurprisingly, this does not win her over, so he breaks down and tells her that he didn't really. She leaves, but as she's waiting for the bus in town, police come and bring her back to the estate because Don Jaime has hanged himself (with Rita's jump rope!), leaving a will that leaves the estate jointly to Viridiana and his long-estranged illegitimate son. Viridiana decides that she cannot become a nun now, but will use the estate to do good, and rounds up all sorts of homeless and destitute
and takes them in to the farm buildings. (One of them refuses to come because he doesn't like her pious charity, but he does take some change. I suspect we are meant to remember him as taking the right course.) Meanwhile the son, Jorge, a dashing but arrogant young man who brings along his reluctant girlfriend arrive. He is smitten by Viridiana but also repulsed by her piety and disappointed that his usual charms are ineffective. However, he does manage to drive off his girlfriend. He is none too happy about Viridiana's do-gooding (although not as unhappy as Moncho, who absolutely despises the rabble and quits) but (rather wrongfooting those of us who had him pinned as the villain of the piece) sets about making the estate into a going concern, while letting Viridiana do her acts of kindness. He also sets about seducing a very willing Ramona. Things come to a head when Jorge, Ramona and Viridiana all head into town on the same day, leaving one of the more reliable paupers in charge, but they quickly break into the main house and stage a massive party,
including shagging behind the sofa, staining beautiful linens and breaking tons of crockery. The owners return unexpectedly early, and the poor scatter, except for a couple of the nastier customers, one of whom knocks Jorge out and starts to molest Viridiana at knifepoint, while the other, a man that Viridiana had been particularly kind to (he has a seeping arm that the others all take for leprosy and keep trying to drive him away, but she treats him and insists that he stay) just watches intending to "take his turn". Jorge comes to (but is tied up) and tells this one that if he kills the rapist he will get money and he happily clonks the rapist over the head. Just as he is getting the money, the cops arrive. Then, a few days later, Jorge and Ramona are in Jorge's room when Viridiana, her hair now let down and no longer wrapped in a headscarf arrives. He lets her in and the three of them start to play cards. The end.
It was the first film that Buñuel made after coming back to Spain after exile, and he was under great constraints (apparently he wanted to end the film with a view of the bedroom door closing on Viridiana, and it was censored, so he replaced it with what he thought was even more salacious, a thinly-veiled reference to a mnage-a-trois. It has since been voted the greatest Spanish film of all time, and is regarded as a bitingly satirical masterpiece, targeting the Catholic Church in particular. Really? Maybe I need my satire to be less subtle, because I don't see that the Church comes out that badly. I'm not sure what we're supposed to think of the presentation of the poor by the lefty Buñuel. I mean, I'm not saying there was really a false note, but I can't see how a conservative could have presented them less attractively. I can imagine quite a few right-wingers could nod along saying "see what happens when you try to give them nice things?" Is the point being that this is what happens when people have to rely on charity rather than the state providing housing, food and employment as a right? And I can't say I appreciated the implication that it took almost (possibly actually - it's not clear) being raped at knifepoint to awaken Viridiana's sexual desires, that the church had repressed (perhaps?) This film also has a reputation as being a comedy, but to me the whole thing was suffused with dread. Viridiana is innocent and good-hearted and gets abused at every turn - yuks a plenty!
Certainly it is a well-made film. It's beautiful to look at, with excellent acting and striking images. (Perhaps the most obviously blasphemous image is when the homeless people pose for a "photograph" at the height of their illicit banquet and it's a recreation of The Last Supper - only instead of taking a picture, the woman who had claimed to have a camera just lifted her skirts at them.)
But the message I got from it is that everything is shit and you should just try to look out for number one. What am I missing? Here's one analysis.
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