- Set in 1973 Spain, a struggling encyclopedia salesman and his wife take advantage of an offer to make adult films. The act turns him into an aspring legit filmmaker and her into an international sex symbol.
- Alfredo Lopez is a tired encyclopedia salesman, and Carmen is his faithful wife. The lives of this married couple change forever when the Montoya publishing house, in which Alfredo works, makes a proposal to them to make erotic films that will sold in the Scandinavian countries, under the guise of being a false encyclopedia about reproduction. Unknown to them both, Carmen has become an adult film star in the Northern countries, and a Danish crew flies in to help Alfredo make an Ingmar Bergman inspired feature film called "Torremolinos 73." Instead of a career in show business, Carmen is eager to have a baby, and the tension between the artist and his muse grows.—Sujit R. Varma
- Set in Spain in 1973, Torremolinos 73 is a comedy in which Alfredo López (Javier Cámara) toils away as an encyclopedia salesman whose numbers are down which bothers his beautician wife, Carmen (Candela Peña), who wants to have a child. This is well before the boom of the Internet and its ability to connect everyone to information through digital signals. Encyclopedias aren't selling, and the head of sales, Don Carlos (Juan Diego) comes up with an idea for a new product line. The company will expand its catalogue to offer an "audiovisual encyclopedia of human reproduction," essentially 8 millimeter films of couples making love. Don Carlos sugarcoats the idea and proclaims that this will prevent his sales staff from losing their jobs, if they decide to include their own lovemaking on film for the company to sell to its clientele.
Don Carlos schedules a convention and an off-site motel, and sets up a meeting between his sales staff and Dennis (Thomas Bo Larsen). Dennis and his over-sexed wife are pornographers from Denmark. Dennis tells everyone he worked with Ingmar Bergman, and is consistently relating Berman's film philosophy to those who will listen. Some of the salesmen refuse Don Carlos' offer to make their own films. After some soul searching, Alfredo goes along in order to keep his job, and Carmen agrees mainly because she has recently lost her job in a local beauty parlour.
The films deliver a successful result and become an underground hit in Spain and Carmen is surprised when she is recognized in public as a glamorous porn star. Alfredo is blind to the fact that he and Dennis are making porno, but regardless he becomes very adept at storytelling with the language of film within the genre. Alfredo's inspiration motivates him to write a screenplay for a serious feature adult film to star his wife Carmen, whose obsession with having a child ultimately proves that the human quality in even this sub-culture is what binds true love to those who seek it out.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content