Cinema: Skeleton in Tulle

Hand in the Trap. Once upon a wedding night, a bride hid from her husband. She hid in a wooden chest that was shaped like a coffin-and then, to her horror, found that she could not lift the lid. She called and called, but no one could hear her. They looked and looked, but no one could find her. Twenty years later, they found what was left of her: a skeleton in tulle.

A grisly fable. It is known to folklore as "The Bride of Modena," and it is elaborated with decadent exuberance in this gloomy picture of provincial life in Argentina. The bride of the film is an innocent young woman seduced and then abandoned by her lover (Francisco Rabal). Her coffin is the room in which she shuts herself forever, a prisoner of pride. Twenty years later, her lover finds what is left of her. At the sight of him, she dies of shock. At the sight of her, he shrugs-and casually seduces her innocent young niece (Elsa Daniel). As the film ends, the story seems to be beginning again.

Geographically, Argentina's Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and Sweden's Ingmar Bergman are poles apart; esthetically, the two directors are quite close. Both record the contortions of provincial puritanism in a style of sensuous opulence. Torre Nilsson is less intense and less profound, but he has something vivid and ironic to say about a society in which women are fenced like cattle and cattle are allowed to run free.