At the end of the eighteenth century, the beautiful Duchess of Alba has countless admirers, not least the famous painter Francisco de Goya and the Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy. Meanwhile, the scheming Queen Maria Luisa arranges a marriage between the Prime Minister and a woman at the court, which does not please the Duchess, the Queen’s great rival. When the Duchess then suddenly dies soon after hosting a dinner, suspicions falls on those most closely associated with her. —BFI
Juan José Bigas Luna (Barcelona, March 19, 1946) is a Spanish film director. He began his professional career in the design world, creating the Estudio Gris with Carlos Riart in 1969. In his earlier exhibitions, at the beginning of the sixties, he showed a great interest in conceptual art and the emerging visual technologies. Esteemed as an atypical director in the Spanish cinema, in 1986 he retired to Tarragona in order to devote his time to painting. In 1990 the producer Andrés Vicente Gómez persuaded him to return to cinema and entrusted to him the direction of Las edades de Lulú, a film which reached the general public. Without abandoning his dedication to painting and photography, reflected in numerous exhibitions, he began the well-known Trilogía Ibérica with Jamón Jamón (1992), Huevos de Oro (1993) and La teta y la luna (1994). Subsequently, with the short film for internet Collar de Moscas (2001), he revived his interest in avant… read more