In a better world, directors prone to uncontrollable vulgarity would be presented with a little booklet of out-of-bounds topics, which is patently not the case here. For someone like Álex de la Iglesia, everything is fair game, and in his latest, Witching and Bitching (Las brujas de Zugarramurdi), he swings his sledge hammer wit at the age old "battle of the sexes".
Enter at your own risk...
De la Iglesia doesn't take long to show his hand. A group of living statues holding-up a gold broker in the centre of Madrid, sparks off a debate about the crippling cost of child support and the difficulties of having to take care of a kid when your a single father. It turns out not too many participants in the hold-up (those with guns or those pinned to the floor) think the silver painted, semi-automatic-toting Jesus Christ should have brought his eight year old to the heist. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. The tension doesn't let up in their hijacked getaway car, where Jesus, a.k.a. José (Hugo Silva) and his hen-pecked accomplice, Antonio (Mario Casas), whip their taxi driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordóñez), into a frenzy so manly he decides to leave his wife and hightail it to the French border.
The only thing between the travelling men's rights group and a year of summer nights scratching their balls at EuroDisney is the town of Zugarramurdi and its resident coven. Yep, Witching and Bitching is that broad. The men are violent criminals under the thumbs of their ex-wives, the women are, quite literally, man-eating witches.
As this sex-sided satire mounted, I caught myself thinking of Federico Fellini's woefully misjudged City of Women. The shared image of hundreds of harridans pursuing a virile hero through an mansion maze certainly beggared comparison, but I pulled myself up because there is a markedly different mindset here. Besides the overtly comic frame, De la Iglesia and his longtime writing partner Jorge Guerricaechevarría get away with what they get away with (where Fellini didn't) in the first instance because they've expanded the stereotypes on both sides of the gender divide with a caricaturist's flair (and in doing so make a point to show the absurdity of the machista mindset), and in the second because they have the likes of Carmen Maura heading up the witches' virulently macabre defence.
They take pot shots at both sexes, and it is undeniable that Witching and Bitching pushes some boundaries when it comes to good taste (there were a good many walk outs at our screening), but it also hits the mark enough times to make it hilariously worthwhile. The scene in which one of the witches uses her capricious, emotionally manipulating love powers on José is particularly amusing, especially when she gets violently upset after he admits he'd rather escape with his friends than spend time with her. Unfortunately, as with many films of this ilk, any semblance of balance falls away in the final act. Ultimately Witching and Bitching needs its heroes and its enemies and it doesn't surprise when it has to choose sides. It's a pity that's exacerbated because the film's climactic scene drags on unnecessarily long and is bloated in almost every (dis)respect.
Final act problems aside, de la Iglesia has turned out another de la Iglesia film. Witching and Bitching probably won't win too many new fans across to his camp - it's brand of humour will be a little too much for the mass market outside his base in Spain - but it is worth hunting out if you're already a convert. Sick fun.
★★★☆
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