| La Ardilla Roja |
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La ardilla roja (''The Red Squirrel'') is a 1993 Film by the Spanish Filmmaker Julio Medem , starring Emma Suárez and Mancho Novo . Jota (Novo), a failed musician whose girlfriend has recently left him, is about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge when a girl on a motorcycle, Sofía (Suárez), crashes off it. Rushing to help her, he discovers she has lost her memory, even forgetting her name. After telling the paramedics and staff at the hospital, that she is his girlfriend, he later tells her the same. He invents an entire identity for her, giving her the name Lisa, and a history of their relationship according to his own fantasies. With the hospital psychiatrist starting to become suspicious, he spirits her out of the hospital and away on a trip to the 'Ardilla Roja' campsite, which he claims they have been planning for some while. As their relationship becomes intimate, their behaviour sparks the suspicions of a family of fellow campers ( Karra Elejalde and María Barranco ) and it becomes clear that Lisa/Sofía's memory is not entirely missing and she is hiding her own past secrets -- notably, the existence a psychotic ex-boyfriend, Félix ( Carmelo Gómez ), who is rampaging across the country in search of her. ''LA ARDILLA ROJA'' AND ISSUES OF BASQUE REGIONAL IDENTITY Though Medem is a Basque, and others of his films have dealt explicitly with Basque regional identity, it is not an immediately obvious theme in ''La ardilla roja''. The main characters are played by non-Basques (Suárez is from Madrid , Novo from Galicia , Barranco indelibly Andalusian in popular consciousness after her role in '' Mujeres Al Borde De Un Ataque De Nervios ''), and much of the action is set at the campsite in La Rioja , a liminal region between the Basque country and Castile . Nevertheless, touches of Basqueness are apparent. Major characters' names are Basque ('Elisa Machinbarrena Fuentes', 'Jota Fernández Arregui') and place names are given in their Stone Age ancestry; settings including the forest, lake and zoo evoke mythology or ruralised narratives of Basque history. Finally, if violence in a Basque context has a very specific connotation -- that of ETA -- which is represented in Félix's random violence and self-mutilation, then Lisa/Sofía's amnesia can be read as an attempt on the part of Basque society to forget and escape from the violence of the past and establish a new idendity for the Basque country that is not founded around ETA. |
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