Accidental porn stars charm with their naiveté

Starting out as a wacky little comedy about a mousy Spanish couple who become unwitting porn stars, "Torremolinos 73" suddenly morphs into a far more sober and tender story about the lengths to which a man will go to give his wife what she wants. It works, but just barely (no pun intended, considering all the nudity).

First Run Features 'Torremolinos 73' 3 out of 5 stars Director: Pablo Berger Starring: Javier Camara, Candela Pena, Juan Diego, Malena Alterio, Fernando Tejero Run time: 91 minutes Release date: June 24, 2005 Rating: Not Rated. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

The year is 1973. Lots of bad fashion, feathered hair and mustaches. Struggling encyclopedia salesman Alfredo (Javier Cámara) is given an offer he can't refuse: Join a new venture of the publishing firm he works for, making educational films about human reproduction and starring his hot wife, Carmen (Candela Peña), or start looking for other work.

His boss, Carlos (Juan Diego) tells him the films are destined solely for a Scandinavian audience (a rationale Alfredo and Carmen use to overcome their initial fears of embarrassing themselves in front of their friends). Out of the blue, Alfredo finds, to his amazement, that he's really, really good at something for the first time in his life. But the short movies he makes turn out to be popular not so much for their director's skills as for Carmen's, er, exuberant screen presence.

See, what Carmen and Alfredo have been making, unbeknownst to them, are not audiovisual aids on the subject of contemporary mating habits after all, but adult entertainment. After a while, though, Alfredo, who has been starting to fancy himself a second Ingmar Bergman, talks Carlos into letting him film a feature from a script called "Torremolinos 73," after the Spanish seaside resort town he has decide to shoot in. One condition, says Carlos: Carmen must star in it. (And if you think Carlos is going to want her to take her clothes off before it wraps, you're right.)

Up to now, the film has been a lark. Alfredo's ever-more imaginative Super 8 movies are goofily life- and lust-affirming, and there's something about the sight of him, in his bald head, tighty-whities and black socks, jumping from behind the camera to his wife's bedside, that's endearingly nebbish.

But the movie takes a turn for the serious when writer-director Pablo Berger introduces a plot element, having to do with Carmen's desire to have a baby, that will be more familiar to viewers from melodrama than comedy. It comes down to a second instance of Alfredo confronting an impossible choice: Neither option will make him entirely happy, and both involve a certain measure of defeat.

But what looks like Alfredo's acceptance of humiliation is actually, in ways so subtle that it's easy to miss, a supreme act of love. As Alfredo's Danish mentor (Tom Jacobsen), a filmmaker who claims to have worked with Bergman, keeps repeating to his protégé, "The camera is your eye. . . . The camera is your heart." In "Torremolinos 73," it might also be a stand-in for other body parts.