After reading Brad Stevens' recent homage to Jesús Franco in Sight & Sound, I write a confessing email to Mr. Stevens, expressing my agreement with him about the new turns in the relation between the spectator and the film/filmmaker, and that how as a result of such drastic shift, a more complicated, and not necessary admiring, relationship with Jesús Franco can be fully understood and maintained.
Since my early encounter with Franco's world, I was aware of the unhealthy view on women and a comic perversity in whatever he was depicting. What I liked in Franco's longish filmography, and I still do, is the representation of architecture and I've enjoyed being taken to isolated chateaus, spooky castles and flashy modern apartments which turn into vessels of crime and lust. Of course, all the location shoot for Franco was merely a way of completing a film in the state of the low-budgetary and the lack of elaborate sets, or in many cases, any set at all. The limitation led to an interesting use of a wide range of built spaces. (When shooting a jungle scene, quite abundant in Franco's films, it becomes simply dreadful.)
For instance, take a look at this ultra kitsch architecture from La comtesse perverse (1976). One could see such amazing examples of Mediterranean garbage only in a Franco film, and at best, the man's solemnity in relating the story to this spaces is no less than Michael Mann's or Italian masters'.
