Eventually every cinephile and movie nerd has to see Fuego (1969), and I do mean “has to”. If you work outside of the mainstream entertainment industry you’ll be inspired by this Argentinian classic. If you have any sense of taste at all you’ll become an instant admirer of Isabel Saril’s style, beauty, and impassioned theatrics.
I first encountered Armando Bó’s Fuego with some friends on a DVD many years ago and I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Fuego is the horniest weepie I have ever seen. The strange thing is that no one was playing for laughs, everyone involved was totally sincere and invested. It was abundantly clear that making Fuego had been an uphill battle for Bó; that he had had to extend and push the budget of the film to capture whatever vision he had on celluloid. There are just so many lessons to learn from this movie with regards to making more of a minuscule production.
It’s Isabel Saril who really owns Fuego. Bó wrote and directed many films for Saril not just because they were lovers, but because a presence like hers belongs up on the screen. Saril, aside from being a great beauty, can cram more melodrama into a slight gesture than Elizabeth Taylor could milk out of a hundred Edward Albee productions. Saril’s performance is true camp. This kind of camp is born out of a desperate search for dramatic truth; it’s the kind of camp one sees in the performances of Maria Montez, Joan Crawford, and Divine.
And there is just so much sex in this movie. Fuego is positively dripping with sex. Every melodramatic beat in the film is countered by a sex scene in one long ongoing dirge. Fuego humps boldly forward with all of the conviction in the world, matching big emotions with bigger orgasms, while Isabel Saril convinces audiences time and again that she is the definitive spectacle of the sixties.
One can be confused, aroused or inspired by Fuego, but one can never hate it. It’s one of those rare underground films whose energy is contagious. John Waters and Pedro Almodóvar both cite this film as a personal favorite, so if you need validation from a more reputable source, you’ve got it. Fuego, as its title suggests, is a force to be reckoned with.
