Tuesday, August 7, 2007

"Odette, Una Comedia Sobre La Felicidad"


This weekend I went and saw a really cute French movie dubbed in Spanish ("Odette") which makes me want to drop everything here and run off to France, even though I hate it there. Like all great movies, there is plenty of lip-sincing, but unlike many bad movies, they are lip-sincing to Josephine Baker doing French Jazz from the 1920s (instead of to bands like Smash Mouth). Odette works in the make-up department in the French version of Macy's, and has a regular customer who is obviously being beaten by her husband and is trying to purchase make-up to cover it up. At one point, she comes in with a really bad black eye and tells Odette she ran into a door, and Odette tells her, "You're pretty, you should find a better door."

I assumed this was just an obscure situation, only today at school we talked about spousal abuse in Spain and apparently it's really common here. There are around 100 cases per year of a man murdering his wife and then killing himself, according to my culture professor. Today we read about a guy who stabbed his wife and then drove to a warehouse to hang himself a couple weeks ago. Usually they don't even get very much publicity for this kind of thing since it's so common (even among teenage couples). Maybe I don't want a Spanish "door" anymore.

1 comment:

toni said...

You should do some more research about what you claim is a "common" situation in spain. I am Spanish, and I can assure you spousal abuse is no more common in Spain than in any other Mediterranean country. Is a horrible thing, but not a "typical Spanish" one at any rate. Just google a bit and you will find that other countries in europe have way bigger rates of this sad reality. And also, please, update your professor. Our "doors" are not worse than any other. Salud, Antonio.