Mad Love (Juana La Loca) Film Review

WHERE’S THE BEAUTY IN MADDNESS?

With history as its subject, Mad Love (Juana La Loca) set my eyes to see through historical films in a different angle. I appreciate how the director crossed beyond the typical way of showcasing history. However, if I didn’t care to research whether it was a historical film or not, I wouldn’t have known nor perceived that the movie was based on a real story. This is mainly because the film left an impression of looking hypothetical and cheesy to me. Though I commend the grand display of the setting of the story, I wasn’t satisfied and I hunger for more of the film’s depth and breadth. It was very predictable and it really ran in a flat note. By that I mean the film concentrated only to one of Juana’s central character, which is her being a passionate, possessive and jealous wife. 

The film started with the seventy year-old Juana, situated alone in a four cornered castle-like room setting. She was lamenting over the man she claim to have ever loved greatly while spinning a top on a table. It stopped spinning closes to the picture of her beloved. This showed an overview of the whole story. The room symbolized that Juana was imprisoned by the enslaving aspects of her life, i.e. her husband’s infidelity, her father’s glutton to power, her responsibility as a ruler and her weak self-governance. And the top symbolized her love and attention, which spun from the one who gave it to her (childhood sweetheart) to her husband, Philip I. Her marriage to Philip was a symbolism of a treaty that Castile and Aragon give alliance to Burgundy and Flanders. The movie effectively portrayed how passion and lust engulfed the beginning of the marriage of Juana and Philip. It flared Juana’s obsession in making love with her husband and entailed possessiveness of Philip. It may have not been explicitly stressed, but for me, she was possessive of her husband because she was engrossed with the lust she feels with him coming to the point of not wanting her husband to share that to anyone else. It wasn’t love; it was all lust and obsession. This is proven by the fact of not hearing Juana forgiving her husband’s unfaithfulness from the moment he asked her to until the end of the film, symbolizing how the love she claims to have for him untrue and distorted. In addition, sex and nudity became a strong component of this film not just to effectively relay the height of passion and obsession Juana had but also it became an instrument for vengeance, in contrast to the puritanical Spain of dictator Francisco Franco. (Jahiel, 2011)

I could not consider Juana mad. It was only unfortunate of her that emotional dexterity was accounted as a mental illness instead of considering it as a temporary mental and emotional disturbance. Emotions were not given as much value before in the film’s depicted setting as it has become today. I commend the actress for effectively irritating me, as a woman, of the truth of how martyr-like women become when it comes to love. Moreover, it is normal to become hysterical knowing that your family has been away from you for so long and news that you’ll never see them again comes. The hysterical screaming of Juana symbolizes the start of her tragic fate. Hence, she also started wearing dark clothes symbolizing her undying grief. Moreover, I acknowledge the lavish and grand use of costumes and places to emphasize the setting of the movie. Though insufficient, I sympathize with the director’s difficulty of showcasing all the central character of Queen Juan de Flandes (Queen of Castile and León) and why he only focused over her unusual yet compelling life story.

            Other essential symbolisms shown in the story are the following: (1) Charles I unusual birth procedure – the son of Juana who placed her mother under the confinement of the monastery was a symbol of Charles’ ironic purpose in her mother’s fate.  (2) Juana spreads her legs and lets Philip make love with her each time they are in conflict with each other. (3) The coin that Philip’s clandestine used to curse him – it was a symbolism of someone plotting an evil scheme to both Philip and Juana. This coin symbolizes Juana’s father that wanted all the power that he could possess from both Juana and Philip.