The night that Asturias shone in Hollywood with Garci

“You only get old when you don't love.” Lulled by the melancholic melody of Cole Porter and in the presence of its scriptwriter and director, the film “Begin the beguine” premiered on March 11, 1982 at the Arango cinema in Gijón. The fifth film by the director and screenwriter Jose Luis Garci, originally from Madrid with deep Asturian roots, told a story about two people in the last part of their lives who recovered their hope. A twilight “love story” that did not work at the box office at first but that fell in love with the voters of the Film Academy: and it took home the statuette for best foreign-language film. A milestone for Spanish cinema that was choked by some cinematographic palates, and that was added to the two awards that the Asturian decorator Gil Parrondo had achieved for “Patton” and “Nicolás y Alejandra, and that began precisely with “Volver a estar” his fruitful collaboration with Garci.

It was not the favorite film to go to the Mecca of Cinema, but it had a stroke of luck because the “rivalry” between “The Beehive”, by Mario Camus, and “Demonios en el Jardín”, by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, benefited it.

The director of “El Crack”, who had achieved great success with his chronicles of Spain in transition (“Asignatura pending”, “Alone in the early morning”, “The green meadows”), took the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angels in a white tuxedo in the style of Bogart in “Casablanca” to collect the statuette from none other than the legendary actress Luise Reiner. And she ventured to speak in English: “All my life I have dreamed of this moment, sometimes dreams come true.” Garci, who was nominated again for “Continuous Session”, “Subject approved” and “The Grandfather” (also filmed in Asturias), remembered the longed-for critic Alfonso Sanchezinspiration of a story starring Antonio Ferrandis in which a Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Antonio Miguel Albajara, returns to his native Gijón after four decades in the United States as a Literature professor, and reunites with his youthful love, Elena ( Encarna Paso). A brief unforgettable encounter.

Generation interrupted

A tribute to an interrupted generation of Spaniards who were young in the 1930s and who “are still here, full of love, hope, courage, tenderness and faith in life, which are absolutely necessary values, in this moment, to start over.”

“Start over” had luxurious supporting roles such as José Bódalo (unforgettable the scene in which Ferrandis reveals his incurable illness) and Agustín González (plus the voice of Pedro Ruiz imitating King Juan Carlos in a phone call). The natural set of Asturias provided exteriors in Gijón, Covadonga, Cudillero, Cangas de Onís, Deva, Pola de Lena, Lake Enol, San Esteban de Pravia, Roces and Mareo. The scenes of the match between Sporting and Atlético de Madrid (the two teams in Garci's red and white heart) were filmed at El Molinón, where Garci would jump with his “Oscar” still warm and doubly excited: on which grass he had dabbed his father, the cubist painter Manuel García Meana. Her son dedicated his most heartfelt film to her. His goal for the entire squad in Hollywood.