Penelope Cruz Movie:

		List Price: $19.98		Label: Sony Pictures Salesrank: 17229 Released: June 2, 1998
		Used Price: $4.92
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: VHS Tape

Editorial Review:
This Spanish fluff from 1992 won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but its significance goes about as far as you can throw a flower petal. The story finds an elderly artist (Fernando Fernán Gómez) giving shelter to a deserter (Jorge Sanz) from the royalist army in provincial Spain, 1931. While on the premises, the young man naturally notes the beauty of all four of his host's daughters. Each takes her turn at seducing him, but this isn't late-night cable TV so much as it is a series of brief character sketches filled out by the way each woman takes charge. It's a clever idea made more clever by the fact that these sundry beauties are acting on the libertine impulses to which their free-thinking father subscribes in principle but has sheepishly abandoned for love. But the film, directed by Fernando Trueba, is rendered so lightly it could almost be mistaken for calendar art. --Tom Keogh

Belle Epoque [VHS] Reviews:
Nostalgia, comedy and beauty...Belle Epoque!!!
2008-07-18 - This is a favorite for me and my family from my parents in their 70's to my cousins in their early 20's. Mom talks about remembering her mother's outfits just like the one's in the picture and dad talking about that time in Spanish history. Beautiful shots, great musical background and the most histerical situations that can happen to a family. But at the end, family is still family!!! Come and enjoy Belle Epoque, as we do!!!

Very entertaining
2008-07-09 - I can watch this movie over and over. The cast is interesting, and in some cases, good looking. While there is some interesting commentary, this movie is more for enjoyment than serious thinking. As the main character has romantic encounters one after the other with four sisters of different personalities, you secretly hope he ends up with each of them in the end. The sisters and their father make up a very non-traditional family for the period, yet come acoss as being more well-balanced and likable than local teacher and his mother who are very traditional. Of course the backdrop of this movie is the republican period right before the Spanish civil war, so there are some issues pertaining to the church, government, and social structure, but the best part of the movie is the gorgeous look of the film and the romantic storyline.

Trying to be cute
2007-12-17 - Film set in 1930s Spain at the time of great political changes in the country. Young (former) seminary student who deserted from the Spanish Army is trying to get a new start in life. Circumstances bring him to a house of a man who has four (4) daughters: one is a young widow, another is engaged, the third one is a lesbian, while the youngest one is a virgin. As this young, confused man is jumping to bed with each one of them, hoping for love, it is less comical and more boring to observe a poor creature trapped in he house of women who is treated as a sex toy and yet gets lucky to marry the youngest one. Too unbelievable to be taken in even as a comedy. One of the early roles for (then) young Penelope Cruz.

high hopes not met
2007-11-16 - I like romantic comedy. I like Spanish films. I am not a prude. I did not like this movie. There was very little character development. The plot consists almost entirely of him briefly hooking up with 4 different sisters. Should I be happy for his discovery of free love? Think he's a sleaze? He seems to be somewhere in the middle, just bumbling along.

And what am I to think of the sister who accepts his profession of love for her and only her after she's watched him declare his love for the other 3? Is the wedding in the end a happy ending? I can't decide because I don't know what to think of the people who get married.

Maybe it is all a political allegory that I don't get because I know so little about this period in Spanish history.

Belle Epoque
2007-07-29 - I found this little movie hilarious. I really enjoyed it, especially the part when the mother arrives. Glad I saw it.