All posts by michaelf

Foreign-language film about a woman in an unhappy marriage, ends up having a tragic love affair…

…with a younger man

I saw this on British TV, probably C4 or at a push BBC2, in one of their late-night arthouse film seasons, I think in the 1990s. Colour film. At the time relatively recently made, and I think it was Spanish, but it could have been Mexican or South American, or possibly even Italian.

The film was set in the victorian/edwardian era – the main character an upper class woman in a loveless marriage to an older man who has no apparent interest in her. I recall a scene where she discovers masturbation in the bath using a fan made of ostrich feathers.

As I remember it as she gets older she ends up having an affair with a younger man, and I think the whole thing ends in some terrible murder – possibly the younger man himself ends up in a relationship with someone else his own age, and he kills the woman?

It is possible I’ve got two films mixed up here though – the victorian era / ostrich feathers, and then the later plot about the older-woman-and-younger-man may be from two different Spanish films.