Alejandro Jodorowsky
Writing credits
Fernando Arrabal (play)
Alejandro Jodorowsky
The film follows Fando (Sergio Klainer) and his paraplegic girlfriend Lis (Diana Mariscal) through a barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of the mythical city of Tar, where legend has it all wishes come true. The film is divided into four acts:
Act I
This first part begins with a flashback of young Fando hanging around with his father. The father says that when he dies, his skin would make a beautiful drum, and that, if ever Fando should ever feel lonely, he should go to the wonderful city of Tar. Fando and Lis begin their journey in a destroyed city (Fando drives Lis in a small wooden cart, which also carries Fando's drum and Lis' phonograph), where they meet a group of aristocrats having a ball in the midst of the destruction. Fando is lured away by a group of seductresses into a junkyard, where he is blinded and made to chase after them. In the end he is tricked into kissing a man and paid for amusing them. Meanwhile, Lis is surrounded by the arisocrats and a flashback occurs, where we see young Lis being lured backstage by a puppeteer (played by Jodorowsky) and being harassed by the artists yonder. Fando throws the money away and goes back to get Lis and leave the city. They hang around in a cemetery: Lis sings "I shall die, and no-one shall remember me..." and Fando reassures her that he will remember her and will visit her grave bringing a flower and a dog. A musical sequence follows, "Qué bonito es un entierro" (how beautiful is a funeral), during which the couple play dead and cavort around the cemetery.
Act II
Fando and Lis pull into what appears to be a dead end until they are guided out by the Pope, who also signals the road to Tar. He also advises them against the coming of the night, which is signaled by the beating of drums, "for those who are asleep become awake". Shortly afterwards the couple come across a marsh in which the bodies of men and women lie asleep. As they approach, they wake up and bathe in mud. Fando leaves Lis behind, planting her in the muddy swamp, much to her chagrin, but changes his mind and rescues her shortly after. Not long afterwards, however, he becomes tired of Lis and mistreats her, dragging her across the desert and abandoning her at the bottom of a spiraling canyon. Fando runs away and upon reaching a mountain top witnesses a card game between three old ladies, playing for the right to suck fruit pulp off a young man's mouth. Fando runs away from the scene and into an ambush composed of desert women armed with bowling balls and a scantily clad woman with a whip. The group chases Fando and sends him tumbling down a hill and right next to the grave of his father, who proceeds to come back to life and send his son into the tomb. Fando eventually goes back to Lis and the two leave. He promises never to hurt her again.
Act III
A sequence of scantily-clothed Fando and Lis follows, painting each others' names in black in a room and proceeding to throw buckets of paint at the walls and at each other. Back in the desert, the couple come across an array of different characters: a man and his blind son begging for blood (which they extract from Lis but the father drinks and leaves nothing for his son), a party of transvestites (who cross-dress Fando and Lis) and an apparition of Fando's mother (who is then shown in a flashback along young Fando, in which we see her death and how she taunted Fando's father - her servants are the young women from Act II), now begging to be killed. Fando subsequently strangles her with her own hair and walks her to her grave.
Act IV
Yet again, Fando becomes tired of Lis, and tearing her clothes apart, chains her up to the cart and hides nearby. He leaves her to the mercy of three men (the clowns from the circus flashback of Lis' childhood)) who slowly approach the scene. Fando reappears and encourages the men to look at her and feel her and kiss her. They do so, but shyly walk away after Fando proudly claims she is his girlfriend. The couple drifts some more but constantly reaches the same barren spot between the mountains. Lis points it out and a frustrated Fando charges against the hills, but to no avail. He then proceeds to handcuff Lis and torture her once more. In retaliation, she throws Fando's treasured drum away, breaking it. An enraged Fando beats Lis up, killing her. Lis is taken away by a mob, who puts her in a coffin and cannibalize parts of her skin. Fando interrupts the ceremony to retrieve Lis' body and eventually bury her. In the film's last scene, Fando visits Lis' grave as promised with a flower and a dog. Calling her name, he lies down by the grave and is covered by crawling ivy. Then, we see a naked Lis rising from the grave, spotting an also naked Fando, and the couple running off into the woods. But we cut back to Fando, lying by Lis' grave, calling her name in dreams, wrapped in ivy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061643/
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