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  • It is an adaptation based on "La Lola se va a los puertos, la isla se queda sola" by Antonio and Manuel Machado . And there's another vintage version : La Lola se va a los puertos (1947) by Juan de Orduña with Juanita Reina , Nani Fernández, Manuel Luna. In this occasion the director Josefina updates the story that takes place in the Andalusia of 1929, adapting the work in which jealousy, love and passion are intermingled . Lola is a wandering Andalusian singer traveling from coastal town to town, accompanied by her faithful guitarist Heredia (José Sancho) , singing coplas and leaving a string of men at her feet . Until she falls in love with the son of one of them, José Luis (Jesús Cisneros) , leaving a rejected father (Francisco Rabal) against them. It doesn't take long for the situation to become dramatic, so the clash between them is inevitable.

    Josefina Molina makes a tiring rendition of the play by Antonio and Manuel Machado, in which father and son fall in love with the same woman. As in the 1920s, the singer Lola began a relationship with the son of a rich landowner while the father also loved her. Molina gives the folk melodrama style , taking advantage of the opportunity to hire the famous singer Rocio Jurado offering her the leading role along with the veteran Francisco Rabal and José Sancho .This overlong motion picture was middlingly directed by Josefina Molina who has received a honorific Goya , she has directed good flicks such as ¨Función De Noche¨, ¨Lo Mas Natural¨, ¨La Lola Se Va a Los Puertos¨ and the prestigious TV series ¨Tesesa De Jesus¨. And her big hit : ¨Esquilache¨ that was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival and won numerous Goya Awards .

    The film is really a Rocio Jurado's recital and true vehicle for this great singer .Rocío Jurado, who sings all the songs on the soundtrack, gives plenty of proof of her talent with granadinas, soleás, fandangos, bulerias, tangos, alegrias, rumbas, malagueñas,... Professionally, Rocío Jurado emerged with a repertoire mostly of copla, an Andalusian traditional genre that was beginning to lose force which she revitalized with energetic performances, as much in voice as in stage presence. Popular in the 60's and early 70's, in part on account of some appearances as an actress in television and film as in the Curro Jiménez series, Rocío made the leap to international stardom by adopting a melodic repertoire of romantic ballad with orchestral instruments and a personal image (make-up, hairdressing and costumes) in accordance with the European style. Rocío alternated the flamenco tailed dress (bata de cola) with sumptuous evening dresses, sometimes highly commented on for their audacity. In the 70's and 80's Rocío recorded her most unmistakable successes: "Como una ola", "Señora", "Como yo te amo", "Ese hombre", "Se nos rompió el amor", "A que no te vas", "Muera el amor", "Vibro"... Many of them composed by Manuel Alejandro and recorded by José Antonio Álvarez Alija. The prolonged celebrity of Rocío lies in the romantic songs rather than in its purely Andalusian folkloric facet. She was famous for these ballads also in Hispano-America, where perhaps she remained in fashion for longer than in Spain, which explains her later scores with Mexican and Caribbean rhythms: "Me ha dicho la luna", "Te cambio mi bulería"...She recorded duets with famous figures from that continent: with José Luis Rodríguez "El Puma" the song "Amigo amor" and with Ana Gabriel the ambiguous song "Amor silencio". In 1990 participated in a show of tribute to Lola Flores in Miami, in which she recorded the duet "Dejándonos la piel". Nevertheless, the romantic successes of international reach did not remove Rocío from its more Andalusian facet. The most convincing declaration of Rocío Jurado in this sense would arrive years later when already she was an outstanding interpreter of the copla and ballads. In 1982 she applied her extraordinary talents to flamenco singing in a double LP with the collaboration of two main figures of this genre: the guitarist Manolo Sanlúcar and the singer Juan Peña "Lebrijano". Titled Ven & Sígueme, she discovered that the famous singer also moved with ease on the roads of Cante jondo. In spite of an already well-developed lyric, the multifaceted artist demonstrates her knowledge and her compass in a series of rigorously traditional folk singing and interpreted with great affection. The filmmaker Carlos Saura took notice and used the voice of Rocío in two feature films: El amor brujo with Cristina Hoyos in 1986 and Sevillanas in 1992 where she plays with such important figures in the flamenco world as Paco de Lucía, Camarón de la Isla, Tomatito, Lola Flores, Manuela Carrasco or Matilde Coral among many others.
  • I saw this film in Spain in 1993 and picked up the soundtrack; it is a wonderful story on the order of Latin American novelas about a flamenco singer caught between a father and a son of a very different social class while her guitarist secretly loves her and dares not say anything.

    The period atmosphere (1920s)is beautiful, and excellently photographed.

    It really made me sad when Rocio Jurado abandoned flamenco music for pop; this film was her "swan song". Unfortunately, this film appears to never have been released in the US, which is a loss to flamenco students and aficionados.