Josè Bigas Luna
Uova d'Oro

LA RECENSIONE

Not only the best film by the Catalan director, but also one of the most beautiful European films of the '90s, where hedonistic excesses blend with an ever-relevant reality and an oneiric-erotic component of rare effectiveness.

The story is about Benito Gonzales (played by a stunning Javier Bardem), a Spanish construction worker passionate about beautiful women and Julio Iglesias, but above all devoted to personal escalation in the construction world at any cost.

Indeed, he starts generating ideas and with an exuberance unique to the most insane individualists, he manages to construct his own empire, shaky and unstable, yet with a dazzling rise. In fact, he obtains capital and guarantees by manipulating friendships and girlfriends, sending his girlfriend to bed with a banker, falsifying documents to elevate his skyscrapers, involving even the banker's daughter, and forming self-serving alliances with high society figures.

Disruptive, self-assured, always horny, enchanted by his own philosophy of life… (I wear two Rolexes, why? I want two of everything. I have two balls, don’t I? So I also have two Rolexes)… Benito Gonzales enjoys the comforts of a superficial good life until the fragile balance of his empire cracks and a heinous fate will fall like an infernal shadow over him.

First, an accident on the construction site - where one of his old concrete buddies dies - then a car accident as a result of which one of his loved ones dies, leaving him crippled. The golden world that enveloped him becomes hazy, and Benito finds himself without credentials, without bank credits, abandoned by everyone. He thus moves to Miami, lame and impotent, contenting himself with watching his last woman (vulgar and coarse) have sex with another and dreaming of new improbable building projects.

The rise and fall of a small provincial god perfectly represent the illusion of the self-made-man willing to do anything to break through, unable to control the inevitable cracks in his castle, and devoted to enjoying fleeting economic and sexual glories in exchange for a future full of squalor and pain. The metaphor of the golden eggs in the title is perfectly functional: the Man-Midas who, thanks to the strength of his "balls," tries to turn everything around him into gold.

Bigas Luna, without renouncing his circus of bare breasts and fragrant sexuality, stages with a compelling rhythm a story that seduces the viewer because it mirrors the hunger for social aspirations that smolders in each of us. And thanks to an excellent cast (which includes, besides the magnificent Bardem, Maria de Medeiros), he signs a dazzling and realistic work even in its most fictional aspects.

To watch and rewatch.