The name of Jose Luis Garcia probably wouldn’t come to mind when thinking about the greatest Spanish filmmaker of all time, but he is the record holder for the number of films from Spain that were nominated for an Oscar. One of them, “Volver e empazar” won the first of four Oscars for Spain in the category of best foreign film, and García’s films were nominated three more times. One of them is “El abuelo” or “The Grandfather”, an old-fashioned and rather sentimental drama. Classic style and sentimentality are the other features of Garcia’s work, and the action here takes place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Don Rodrigo (Fernando Fernan – Gomez), the Count of Albrita and an aging Spanish aristocrat, has returned home after spending his fortune in America. He had previously transferred the family property to his son, but he died in the meantime, and the property is now managed by his daughter-in-law Lucrecia. Old Don Rodrigo never liked that foreigner of English origin, especially after he found out that one of her daughters was not his granddaughter. In a letter sent to him by his son before his death, Rodrigo learned that one of the two daughters, Lucrecia, was born during an affair with a Parisian painter. This is why the old aristocrat decided to find out who his granddaughter really is.
And it all looks chamber, theatrical, completely in the footsteps of classic Spanish films from the fifties and sixties, in which you can almost feel nostalgia for those old, almost feudal times. And old Rodrigo is a true relic of those bygone and long-forgotten times, a member of a once-respectable noble family who today is nobody and nothing. However, he is still a proud old man who still tries to stick to some old code, and even though he was not at home for a long time, he knows very well all those people who have become very important today. He knows very well those little souls, those hypocrites who licked him and begged him for favors when he was powerful, and now they play big faces.