‘Grandfather’ a Heartfelt Story of Love and Honor

There’s more than a whiff of “The Cherry Orchard” permeating Jose Luis Garci’s “The Grandfather,” a rueful, funny and deeply moving fable in which a curmudgeonly old aristocrat must chose between love and honor. An Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film of 1998, the period tale stars the formidable veteran Fernando Fernan-Gomez in a great role that crowns a long and distinguished career.

After a lengthy and foolish sojourn in Peru in a fruitless search for gold, Don Rodrigo, the count of Albrit (Fernan-Gomez), returns penniless to his magnificent ancestral lands in the province of Asturias. A tall man with a mane of white hair and a flowing beard to match, Don Rodrigo, while given to delusions of grandeur, is not in denial over his penurious state, but this does not stop him from carrying on as if he were Louis XIV in high dudgeon.

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With an eloquent command of language, the don is given to denunciations so withering as to be awe-inspiring. During his absence of some seven or eight years, his son has died, and the don, taking his sources at face value, turns a verbal blowtorch on his beautiful and assured daughter-in-law Lucrecia (Cayetana Guillen Cuervo), an aristocratic woman with her own wealth. He blames her for his son’s death, maintaining that she deserted him. The couple were estranged, but you believe Lucrecia when she insists she married Don Rodrigo’s son for love.

By contrast, it’s mutual love at first sight between Don Rodrigo and his lovely granddaughters Dolly (Cristina Cruz) and her younger sister, Nelly (Alicia Rozas), who are in residence in the countryside at the Albrit manor house. Quite quickly, too, Don Rodrigo forms a fast friendship with the girls’ elderly tutor, Don Pio Coronado (Rafael Alonso), a woebegone intellectual weighed down by six unmarried, termagant daughters. Don Pio is as ineffectual as Don Rodrigo is forceful, but the teacher is so honest in his self-appraisal that the crusty nobleman cannot help but like him. But Don Rodrigo’s newfound happiness is imperiled by his penury and his foolhardy and unjust alienation of his daughter-in-law.

Indeed, Rodrigo is surrounded by those who loathe him for his stinging bluntness, overlooking the fact that the count of Albrit has always been the most generous and protective of patriarchs. These enemies, led by the shamelessly smarmy Senen (Agustin Gonzalez, in a delicious performance), are the same people who are toadying up to Lucrecia for favors. Rodrigo and the film itself take a scathing view of the crass ambition of the nouveau riche yet recognize the inherent injustice of the class system.

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But the big question that emerges is whether Don Rodrigo, beyond his Quixote-like blustering is merely a grandiose poseur or at heart a true gentleman, capable of genuine noblesse oblige in the crunch.

In between the don’s amazing displays of bombast, there are scenes of tenderness between grandfather and granddaughters, and the granddaughters and their mother, and there’s much amusement in Rodrigo and Pio’s spirited and mutually affectionate conversations.

The late Alonso, in his final role, was as beloved a veteran as Fernan-Gomez, and it’s a pleasure to watch the two actors play off each other with such delightful finesse. “The Grandfather” is a wise and beautiful film that, while acknowledging the inevitability of loss and change, bids a heartfelt and bemused farewell to the ancient regime.

* MPAA rating: PG, for thematic elements and language. Times guidelines: language, adult themes and situations.

‘The Grandfather’

Fernando Fernan-Gomez: Don Rodrigo

Rafael Alonso: Don Pio Coronado

Cayetana Guillen Cuervo: Lucrecia

Agustin Gonzalez: Senen

A Miramax Films presentation. Director Jose Luis Garci. Producers Luis Maria Delgado, Valentin Panero and Enrique Quintana. Screenplay by Garci and Horacio Valcarel. Cinematographer Raul P. Cubero. Editor Miguel G. Sinde. Costumes Gumersindo Andres. Art director Gil Parrondo. Set decorator Julian Mateos. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

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