The Bilingual Lover

The Bilingual Lover Spanish El Amante Bilinge is a 1993 Spanish film, written and directed by Vicente Aranda adapted from a novel by Juan Mars. It stars Imanol Arias, Ornella Muti and Loles Len. The film is a grotesque drama with some elements of comedy. Set in Barcelona in the 1980s, El Amante Bilinge takes an ironic approach to Catalonian linguistic policies, nationalism and eroticism with a pattern of double identity based on elements from the authors life.

Norma works for the department of linguistics of Generalitat while Juan or Joan, his Catalan name, is overwhelmed by the social position acquired through the marriage. There is little use in Mars new life for his skills as ventriloquist or accordion player. After five years, the marriage starts to fall apart, when Normas real character comes to the surface. The beautiful Norma is a proud, cold woman with dark sexual tendencies. She has a special attraction for low class men who are xarnegos. Norma also has a particular fetish with shoes, the men she sleeps with have to hold a shoe with the sole force of their erection. Juan returns home one evening, earlier than expected. He finds his unfaithful wife having sex with a shoe shiner xarnego. Face with proof of her infidelity, Norma, tired of her husband, just leaves him for good.Juan keeps the apartment he used to share with his wife but without her support he is reduced to scratch a living from the streets playing the accordion and begging for money in La Rambla. While performing on the streets, he is caught in the middle of a confrontation between a proCatalan language group and a Spanish right wing extremists. Juan plays Els Segadors, which makes him a target of the extremists who throw a Molotov cocktail at him, burning him. ........

Source: Wikipedia