“Madrid, 1987”: There’s a Girl in My Tub

I imagine being locked in a bathroom with a horny, septuagenarian columnist and a young female journalism student in her early twenties, both nude, for over an hour. Seldom has a great film accomplished so much with so little. Well, that’s if you consider an insanely quotable screenplay so little.

Director/writer David Trueba’s phenomenally witty Madrid, 1987 is an expertly constructed exploration of politics, gender roles, the art of writing, fame, and aging randiness set against a Spain that has moved from fascism to communism to unrepentant capitalism: “Overstepping human rights in the fight against terrorism was never an issue.” Miguel (Jose Sacristan) has survived and commented on all of these changes for the past 25 years, and not without risk to his body and soul, but today all he wants to do is seduce Angela (Maria Valverde). And Angela? Is she as naïve as Miguel thinks and hopes she is?

The seduction begins in a local restaurant where Miguel types his daily column (“You crossed the café like a gazelle totally out of place among all this vulgarity”) and moves on to an apartment being lent to the writer for this tryst by an artist friend: a pal who forgets to warn, “Don’t shut the bathroom door.”