Tristana

A young orphan is sexually initiated by her older uncle, launching a cycle of imprisonment, hatred, and vengeance, in Luis Buñuel’s haunting study of sexual politics.

Set in Toledo in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this darkly comic cautionary fable chronicles the shifts in power between an idle, supposedly free-thinking nobleman and the virginal young ward he falls for and seduces. Fernando Rey and Catherine Deneuve are perfectly cast in Buñuel’s masterly dissection of hypocrisy, misbegotten passion and innocence corrupted.

This twisted, haunting study of sexual politics and the concept of freedom was Luis Buñuel’s last film to be shot in his native Spain. Tristana and Don Lope are both passionate about freedom of choice but they both find their choices regulated by unconscious desire – a recurring Buñuel theme that finds its perfect embodiment in these two fascinating characters that we see changing before our very eyes.