Rent Viridiana (1961)

Charity, But Make It a Trap - Viridiana review by griggs

I don’t really buy Buñuel as cinema’s great pioneer. He feels more like a talented magpie: he clocks what’s in fashion, pinches it, then uses it to start an argument. Viridiana has a whiff of Fellini’s earthy pageantry, but the targets are pure Buñuel — Catholic virtue, bourgeois comfort, and the tight moral weather of Franco’s Spain. It was banned at home and kept out of the regime’s hands, yet it still shared the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1961. That tells you the vibe.

The setup’s simple: Viridiana wants to do good. Buñuel’s response is basically, “Alright then — let’s see how long that lasts.” He keeps yanking big ideas back down to earth with animals, dirt, food, bodies… all the stuff you can’t pray away.

That first night at Don Jaime’s house is properly unsettling: she sleepwalks with ashes (penance, death, all that), while he’s fussing over her shoes and corset like loneliness can be turned into romance if you just tighten the laces. Later, the beggars’ charity meal morphs into a warped Last Supper, and the film stops playing nice — the threat of violence feels like the point where Buñuel stops teasing and starts twisting the knife.

And then the ending: a polite card game invite that reads like, “Welcome to compromise.” It’s wicked, sourly funny, and it hangs around on you like a smell you can’t quite shift.

Well worth a watch - Viridiana review by JP

Never a dull moment, it grabs your attention. The plot moves quickly but so much that you ever get lost. The characters are interesting and there for a reason I enjoyed the way they develop throughout, especially Viridiana herself. I was left at the end wanting to know what happened next.