Spanish Fly

The author (Kastner), director (Kastner), and starring actor (also Kastner), and her character in the film, all show an equal dearth of imagination, depth, feel for dialogue, and understanding of people.

Basically the idea is this: an unattractive frumpish American girl goes to Madrid with an advance from some publishing company to write a book about "macho" Spanish men. However, she knows no Spanish, nothing about men, and her attempts to organise a few half-baked ideas about her subject come to nothing, as does the half-baked premise of the film. The protagonist is totally unegaging to the point of being irritating, all the male characters are one-dimensional props to support the film's fragile premise, and the caricature of Madrid as a steamy hothouse of hormone-filled men clutching submissive women in every nook and cranny is at best blinkered and at worst insulting.

An embarrassingly ill-conceived film which becomes more and more banal as it goes on. How Ms Kastner ever got to make the thing is beyond me.