Year: 1983
Duration: 01:15:52
Directed by: Alfonso Balcázar
Actors: Concha Valero, Jordi Batalla, Andrea Albani
Language: Spanish
Country: Spain
Also known as: El marqués, la menor y el travesti
Description:
The film promisingly opens with images of a car driving along the Catalan seaside
as the titles appear and we hear Ramón Balcázar Llorente’s signature tune for all five films
in the series. A young girl by the name of Alicia (Concha Valero) arrives to stay in the villa
of a Marquis (Jordi Batalla), pretending to be a wealthy heiress on a visit to buy some of the
nobleman’s horses . In reality she is part of a plot by her uncle the butler (Joaquín Gómez),
who wants her to become impregnated by the Marquis so that she can marry into his fortune.
The dastardly butler spies on much of what is happening through the two peepholes he has bored
in the room in the house for the benefit of the voyeuristic Marquis , but what he sees through
them and elsewhere is not encouraging. Alicia has become infatuated with the stable boy Juan
(James Garci), and the Marquis shows less interest in her than in Claudia (Andrea Albani),
the model he uses when cultivating his passion as an amateur photographer. Alicia’s uncle is
dismayed at all this and forbids Alicia to have anything to do with Juan, while keeping his
eye on the two other women competing with Alicia for the Marquis’s attention, Claudia and the West
Indian maid Sara (Jennifer James), who is unhappily married to the butler himself. Now forced by
her uncle to remain in the exclusive company of women, Alicia is reminded (via a flashback) of
her intense past affair with another woman (Nina Merlan), and soon initiates a sexual relationship
with the Marquis’s lesbian sister (Mirna Bel). Then she starts making moves towards Claudia as does,
in parallel, the Marquis.
When Claudia proves unresponsive towards the Marquis, although she seems to appreciate him,
the simmering aristocrat turns his eye towards Alicia, whom he espies as she is pleasuring
herself with a dildo, not knowing that she has been deliberately set up to seduce her.
He bursts into her room and pounces on her (“I’ll show you where my title comes from!”).
The deed accomplished, Alicia later tries to seduce Claudia only to discover (cue for a
body double for Andrea Albani) that “she” is actually a transvestite. Some time later,
Alicia announces that she has become pregnant and the Marquis agrees to marry her.
But, to the butler’s dismay, he still seems more interested in Claudia, whom he wants
to be with for the last time. Alicia locks her uncle in the room with the peepholes and
then sets up a lesbian orgy involving herself, the Marquis’s sister and Sara. Meanwhile,
the Marquis, as Claudia decides to respond to him, starts feeling between “her” legs.
After the initial dismay, he simply says, echoing Billy Wilder and Joe E. Brown, “Well,
better too much than too little. Nobody’s perfect!”. They continue with their lovemaking.
Amidst all this, the butler, unable to leave the room, finds himself furiously bouncing
back and forth between the two peepholes, despairingly seeing either the Marquis with
Claudia (“that faggot sonofabitch!”) or Alicia with the two women (“that dyke!”).
Seeing the irretrievable failure of the plan he had been working on for years, he hangs
himself (!), which is conveyed by the director as a shot of his feet kicking very actively
and angrily at the top of the frame as a chair lies on the ground. The story over,
the Marquis settles down with Claudia and Alicia leaves with the stable-boy.
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