Writer/director Pablo Berger's engaging sex comedy has been praised in some quarters as a Spanish Boogie Nights, but it's altogether a gentler, more romantic film.Set in 1973 towards the end of the censorious Franco era, hapless door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman Alfredo (Javier Cámara) is given a blunt choice by his boss – accept redundancy or diversify into making 'sex education' home movies with his shy wife Carmen (Candela Peña) for the Danish porn industry.After some hesitation, the couple set to with a passion and become increasingly bold in staging their fantasies for the camera – until Carmen unwittingly becomes something of an international sex symbol and Alfredo gets the chance to fulfil his dream of directing a feature film inspired by his cinematic idol Ingmar Bergman.The leads weave a potent and convincing chemistry, both as lovers and as a long-married couple, while Berger lightly coaxes humour and an eccentric romance to the fore.

Pablo Berger, the director of "Torremolinos 73", takes us back to the Spain of the seventies when Franco was still around and where he sets the scene for this satire about the clandestine porno industry. Mr. Berger also wrote the screen play, that at times is mildly amusing by the situation he creates. If you haven't seen the movie, please stop reading here.We first see Alfredo trying to sell books door to door without much success. His boss calls his staff and informs a new revamping in the business. He is going to start a series of experimental films about sex education that will be marketed abroad. The employees are shocked, and only Alfredo and his wife Carmen, and another man, agree to participate. Carmen wants to have children, which seems not to come to her and Alfredo.Carmen becomes a favorite sight in the Scandinavian countries, and she is even as identified in a department store in Madrid by one of her fans. Since their Scandinavian instructors keep on quoting the great Ingmar Bergman, Alfredo decides to make his own film that parallels "The Seventh Seal". The shooting is in an empty hotel in Torremolinos where Alfredo and his crew are seen filming the movie in the artistic black and white, but suddenly Carlos, the money man, wants a bit of sex in the picture. Alfredo is shocked because since he is not participating, Carmen will have to perform with the leading man! Javier Camera, who was so good in "Talk to Her" plays Alfredo, the book peddler turned porno film director. Candela Peña makes a good suffering Carmen who is lured into the scheme because of necessity. Juan Diego is seen as Alfredo's boss.The film has a faded look that blends well with the period its trying to reproduce. The film has some funny moments.

This is about Spain in the 70s, with the falangists still in power. A salesman of dictionaries about the civil war is about to be fired. But his boss gives him another opportunity: Start making porno films together with your wife for my company.They start doing so, but there are conflicts of course. This movie can't decide if it is a comedy or a wannabe tragedy and it ends in neither. This could have been mostly funny if the creators had done more of the 70s feeling, but they don't. And in the end you laugh more at the persons you ought to feel sorry about. Not a must.

the plot is not enough to justify a 90 minutes movie but for a 20 minutes television sketch. The actress Candela peña does it very good, but actor camara doesn't fits with the fisic-du-role for a porno star. The funny situations are better achieved than the dramatic ones.The first half you expect for a lot of possibilities the subject could be developed, but it never does. When the sign "the end" comes, you think that something is missing, it's not possible an ending like that, maybe the deadline are the only explanation for such a sudden end, when you're still waiting for something that justify the movie.The recreation of the seventies atmosphere is achieved, and the music helps to that goal. You can see it, if you want a light comedy without many pretensions.