Goya In Bordeaux

This film's splendid visuals suit the subject, Spain's greatest painter, but its stilted dramatics are wholly at odds with Francisco de Goya's tumultuous life and times. Its greatest moment is its first; in the tremendously witty opening shot, the viscera of a gutted slaughterhouse cow morph into the ancient, scarred face of Goya himself, played with raspy gruffness by the veteran Spanish actor Paco Rabal (L'ECLISSE). Disoriented and close to the end of his life, Goya is sitting out a repressive Spanish regime in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux, France. Though he awakes to find himself wandering the streets in his nightgown, and is haunted by the specter of his grea...