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''The Bilingual Lover'' ((スペイン語:El Amante Bilingüe)) is a 1993 Spanish film, written and directed by Vicente Aranda adapted from a novel by Juan Marsé. It stars Imanol Arias, Ornella Muti and Loles León. The film is a grotesque drama with some elements of comedy. Set in Barcelona in the 1980s, ''El Amante Bilingüe'' takes an ironic approach to Catalonian linguistic policies, nationalism and eroticism with a pattern of double identity (based on elements from the author's life). ==Plot== Juan Marés (an anagram of the author's name) is a Catalan man from a humble background, the son of a frustrated zarzuela seamstress and an illusionist known as Fu-Ching, the magician. He grew up in Barcelona during the 1950s, dreaming of leaving his poverty behind. In December 1970, he meets his future wife. He was in a photograph exhibit, when just coincidence involved him with a group who was organizing a hunger strike for four days in protest of the Burgos trial verdict. There, he meets Norma Valenti, the only daughter of a wealthy family of traditional and conservative Catalan background. In spite of big economical, social and cultural differences between them, Juan and Norma get married. Norma works for the department of linguistics of Generalitat while Juan or Joan, his Catalan name, is overwhelmed by the social position acquired through the marriage. There is little use in Marés’ new life for his skills as ventriloquist or accordion player. After five years, the marriage starts to fall apart, when Norma’s real character comes to the surface. The beautiful Norma is a proud, cold woman with dark sexual tendencies. She has a special attraction for low class men who are “xarnegos”. Norma also has a particular fetish with shoes, the men she sleeps with have to hold a shoe with the sole force of their erection. Juan returns home one evening, earlier than expected. He finds his unfaithful wife having sex with a shoe shiner xarnego. Face with proof of her infidelity, Norma, tired of her husband, just leaves him for good. Juan keeps the apartment he used to share with his wife but without her support he is reduced to scratch a living from the streets playing the accordion and begging for money in La Rambla. While performing on the streets, he is caught in the middle of a confrontation between a pro-Catalan language group and a Spanish right wing extremists. Juan plays Els Segadors, which makes him a target of the extremists who throw a Molotov cocktail at him, burning him. Horribly disfigured in the explosion, Juan Marés falls deeper into indigence and schizophrenic hallucinations. His personality is transformed by his misfortune. He is obsessed with the happiness he has lost and with the memory of his wife. He encounters Norma a couple of times, first while he is performing on the streets, but she does not recognize him in his new painful condition. Marés talks to her again during the carnival in Barcelona, under the disguise of the invisible man; only at the end of their small talk, he gives her a clue about his identity. Another day he calls her up at work pretending to need help in the translation of many words from Spanish to Catalan. His hallucinations increase and a new identity starts to take shape in his mind: the emphatically non-Catalan Juan Faneca (the author's birth name). Faneca has a strong, deep Murcian accent, a pencil mustache, dark complexion, sharp sideburns and eye patch. He is a xarnego from Murcia and childhood friend of Marés, coming back to Barcelona after years living as a worker in Germany. Juan Marés, now under the disguise of Juan Faneca, tries first his new identity with his lonely neighbor, Griselda, an Andalusian widow who is in the process of embracing everything Catalan to start a new life in Barcelona, whom he seduces, starting an affair. Later with the excuse of looking for Juan Marés, Faneca gets closer to Norma and his dream is fulfilled. They have a one-night stand, which leaves both Juan and Norma disappointed. By then Juan Faneca has completely taken over Marés, who is no more. Juan decides to continue his life as a cuckold with Griselda. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Bilingual Lover」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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