Undescribable Perfection

Pretty Good

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

... and nothing more. sure, it is a nice film. and a not bad homage to a great matador. but the coherence of story is absent. the roots of story - reduced at sketches. the love story, the dramatic love story, only as occasion for remind slices from soap opera. and the only problem is, in fact, the cast. Adrien Brody deserves a better script. Penelope Lopez has the science to give more than a series character. something fundamental is wrong in this case. and this is all.

It took me a second time to watch it to realize that it took place in the 1940's and in Spain.I also just realize that it was made in 2008 .I thought it just released. Adrian Brody,with his handsome hawk nose and sad eye brows, portrays an English speaking Spanish bull fighter.He just dropped his old girl friend whom he was almost going to shoot.This movie portrays the life of a bull fighter and the danger that they live because of this sports.He meets the very exotic Penelope Cruze, who's an actress or a model.They start to have a affair with each other.Then as usual in these films she start to worry about him dying in the bull ring and tries to get him to quit.This story is almost like blood and sand.He later learns that she was a communist and was married to a communist in the military.He takes her out of jail under his custody.His managers does not like him having an a affair with her cause it's not good for a bull fighter to care.This was quite a good story. Ironically none of this was shot in Mexico.The costumes and hairdo's fit the period of the time 1945 to 46 to?Like blood and Sand this bull fighter ends up getting killed because of his distraction cause by his love for Penelope Cruze. What a mistake. Available at Red box Rentals.08/21/12

I guess I'm just a sucker for a sappy romance, period piece combination. The whole movie is beautiful to look at even if you have to rewind a few times to understand what is being said because they are in Spain speaking English. I do not understand why this movie received such little publicity. I had never heard of it before I saw it in the Redbox, and I'm glad I rented it. I'm not trying to spoil the movie for you, but be warned the life of a Matadors mistress is a stressful one. ha The whole movie centers around the romance between the Matador and his mistress. She is his mistress, but not because he is married to another woman. You will understand once you watch the movie. Anyway to sum up, if you hate somewhat historical, sappy romances don't watch this one.

"Matador's Mistress" might be profitably viewed - and not so easily underestimated - if we try to see it as a work of art in its own right, that is, as much more than a dramatic tribute to the legendary bull-fighter Manolete or a cinematic rendering of his great passion for Lupe. Manolete's tale has been elevated to an archetypal tragedy of Love-Death. Director Meyjes has put right under our noses the mad mechanics of our wildest dream, in full confidence that it will fascinate romantic viewers without their fully registering what's going on. But the clues to a psychological study of machismo are all here. Why else does the film open with the brazen insult that Lupe has scrawled in lipstick on Manolete's mirror, an act of humiliation, ripping into her lover's essential wound? And why does it alternate, so suggestively, the scene of Manolete's and Lupe's love-making with that of the fight in which Manolete daringly caresses the bull? And Manolete's relation to his mother, plainly making Lupe her surrogate? This romance turns on the little secret that he gives up in his sexual climax, in the little death that secretly prepares the viewer for his last words. Whatever the historical relationship between these lovers, it has been taken up artfully into an exploration of the matador's psyche, and by extension, the psyche of Spain. Lupe plays a cruel game with Manolete, because the psychic roots of his devotion are so exposed, more than any woman wants to see. Yet the film asks: is there ever any other source of obsession with Woman? Lupe can only despise Manolete, even as she is ravished by him. Such a love can only find one resolution.A genuine work of art.