MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Don Juan’ a Fitfully Amusing Farce

The Don Juan myth has been the inspiration for the likes of Mozart and Byron and G.B. Shaw--and Antonio Mercero. A journeyman Spanish director of no particular note, Mercero does not, at least, attempt to inflate his new movie “Don Juan, My Love” (at the Westside Pavilion) with gaseous significance.

It’s a knockabout farce with a few too many knocks. Pedro Almodovar, alone among Spanish directors, is able to whip up a farcical atmosphere of supreme, and supremely subversive, silliness. Mercero is a far more flat-footed fellow. He’s assembled all the right elements for farce, but he doesn’t know how to send them aloft.

On the eve of All Saints Day in Seville, the ghost of Don Juan (Juan Luis Galiardo) rises from his grave for his annual 24-hour leave from Purgatory. If he can commit a good deed, so the legend goes, he’ll be freed from his twilight zone. This being the 450th time for this annual ritual, his prospects don’t seem especially rosy, but there’s a new twist: He stumbles onto a rehearsal for a production of “Don Juan Tenorio,” starring an obnoxious heel who could be his double (Galiardo again), and ends up taking the heel’s place on the boards and in the bedroom.

The opportunities for mistaken-identity farce are rife, and some of the jokes have a Three Stooges or Benny Hill-style heft. Most of it, though, is labored and repetitive; Mercero seems to think that no joke is so worn out that it can’t be worn a bit more. Galiardo, in his guise as the obnoxious Don Juan, has a fairly funny look of aggressive imbecility, but it’s his only look.

There’s a terrific credit sequence: a flamenco dancer steps furiously while shouting out the names of the film’s contributors. And it’s possible to look at this film as a comically convoluted way of lampooning the Latin obsession with macho.

But the film (Times rated Mature for adult situations) isn’t ultimately derisive of Don Juan’s amatory shenanigans. It ends up celebrating his spirit, and that celebration may be more culturally revealing than any of the film’s attempts to make him foolish. A number of actresses recognizable from the Almodovar stock company turn up, including Maria Barranco and Rossy de Palma, with her profile out of Picasso by way of Modigliani. In his films, they have a shimmer; because of his way of seeing, we associate them with his antic dreamscape. In “Don Juan, My Love,” they come across as just ordinary actresses.

‘Don Juan, My Love’

Juan Luis Galiardo: Don Juan

Juan Luis Galiardo: Juan Marquina

Maria Barranco: Dona Ines

An International Film Exchange release. Director Antonio Mercero. Executive producer Jose Maria Calleja. Screenplay Joaquin Oristrell, Antonio Mercero. Cinematographer Carlos Suarez. Editor Rosa Graceli-Salgado. Music Bernardo Bonezzi. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

Times rated Mature (adult situations).