Villaronga, Agustí

(1953- )

   This Majorca-born filmmaker made a number of shorts between 1976 and 1980, but then carried out a variety of tasks like costume or production designer before directing his first feature, Tras el cristal (Behind Glass, 1987), a claustrophobic film about an ex-Nazi officer who was also a child abuser. When he becomes trapped in an artificial lung after an accident a few years later, one of his previous victims comes back to take revenge. The film evidences a personal, obsessive world and a taste for morbid atmospheres not lacking in beauty, as well as an exceptional visual sense: although weak in traditional narrative structure, the film communicates strong emotions visually. Next came El niño de la luna (The Moon Child, 1989), another visually striking film, and the television thriller El pasajero clandestino (The Clandestine Passenger, 1995). It was followed in 1997 by 99.9, an accomplished (and more commercial) horror film starring María Barranco and Gustavo Salmerón.

   El mar (The Sea), made in 1999, is Villaronga's most complex film. It meant a return to some of the themes of his debut. Based on a hermetic novel by Blai Bonet, Villaronga extracted homoeroticism from his story of three friends in a sanatorium during the early post-Civil War period. Aro Tolbukhin: En la mente del asesino (Aro Tolbukhin: Inside the Murderer's Mind, 2002), co-directed with Isaac Pierre Racine, documented the biography of a real-life arsonist, combining dramatized segments with documentary materials.

   Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema by Alberto Mira