Siesta (1987)

Director:

Mary Lambert

Writers:

Patrice Chaplin (novel)
Patricia Louisianna Knop (writer)

Release Date:

11 November 1987 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

The time of day when mystery and passion become one.

Plot:

Claire (an American) wakes up in a terrible state at the end of a runway in Spain. As she tries to account for her state (blood-soaked and bruised)...

Plot Keywords:

Spain | Flashback | Nudity | Marriage | Erotica

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Ellen Barkin	...	Claire
Gabriel Byrne	...	Augustine
Julian Sands	...	Kit
Isabella Rossellini	...	Marie
Martin Sheen	...	Del
Grace Jones	...	Conchita
Jodie Foster	...	Nancy
Gary Cady	...	Roger
Graham Fletcher-Cook	...	Gary
Daniel Martín	...	Beaten Spaniard
Fabián Conde	...	Injured Spaniard
José María Cañete	...	Ticket Agent #1
Jaime Doria	...	Detective #1
José Teodoro	...	Ticket Agent #2
Frank Braña	...	Park Policeman

Runtime:

Germany:93 min | Portugal:100 min | USA:97 min | Argentina:99 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Portugal:M/16 | South Korea:18 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:18 | Argentina:16

Filming Locations:

Spain

Company:

Palace Pictures

Trivia:

'Mary Lambert (I)' had also directed 'Madonna''s "La Isla Bonita" music video the same year in exactly the same city. The exteriors in the music video are identical to the ones in this movie.

Quotes:

Claire: I remember coming here, and I remember nothing else.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Stephen King's 'Pet Sematary': Filming the Horror (2006) (V)

Soundtrack:

Everything but You

some interesting stuff going on here, but time might be better spent on the novel?

Claire "On a Dare" wakes up by an airport runway wearing a red dress. She's dirty and bruised. She has no idea where she is or how she got there, or even what day it is, but she does remember who she is and retains most of her memories. She strips off her dress by a creek to wash off it and herself what seems to be blood, and sunbathes nude to dry off - sustained full-frontal nudity within the first two minutes of the movie, jeepers!

I'm reminded of a line from the novel The Screaming Mimi by Frederic Brown, "There's murder before the story proper starts, and murder after it ends; the actual story begins with a naked woman and ends with one, which is a good opening and a good ending, but everything between isn't nice."

Claire, finding the blood washes off her thinks someone else must be dead. Discovering and remembering that she is in Spain, she thinks she may have killed her ex-lover Augustine, or his new wife.

Claire had been due to skydive without a parachute into a dormant (or artificial?) volcano covered with a net to catch her, that will be on fire. If she misses the net, or hits it after it has burned too much, she's dead in Death Valley. Receiving a letter from her ex-lover who doesn't want her to do the stunt, she flies to Spain to try to get him to return to her, despite her having been married to her promoter for six years or so.

Claire has some strange adventures, sometimes pretty horrible. A fat taxi driver with tin dentures offers to help, but his price is sex, or rape. An eccentric brawling artist tries to help her, and doesn't seem to have any motive other than "the good you give out is returned to you."

Sprinkled throughout are shots of Claire skydiving; like Roger Ebert, I couldn't tell if this was "fantasy [...] memory, or anticipation" not that it makes much difference. Throughout "falling" gets mentioned a lot in other ways. Claire, in a Catholic church says she feels like she is falling, the artist talks about how the only kind of falling that isn't failing is falling in love, etc.

One thing the title seems to refer to is a siesta Claire's ex-lover takes in a small building near a church, where they perhaps used to have sex.

Bruce Joel Rubin wrote a screenplay in the 1970s that was considered one of the best unproduceable scripts. This movie seems in a way an attempt to make it, though it is based on a novel. This movie didn't really do it for me, and perhaps time would be better spent reading the novel. Rubin's screenplay was produced a few years after this movie, and turned out quite well.