Al otro lado del espejo (1973)

Filmmaking is an incredibly laborious, time sensitive process and because of how consuming making a movie is, it's always admirable when a director is able to not only be prolific, but retain a good amount of consistency throughout a body of work as well as an authorial voice, as opposed to seeming like a hired hand. Takashi Miike is especially adept at this but no other director embodied this type of working more than Jess Franco. With over 200 films to his credit, Franco didn't always hit his target and being his biggest critic he himself would readily admit to that. The majority of the time however he did, and what's especially incredible is that some of Franco's very best work was done during some of his most exhaustively prolific periods. 1973 was crucial year for Franco which saw Franco complete 12 feature films but more important than the number was the fact that several of the films from that year represent Franco at his most inspired with films like Plaisir à trois, Countess Perverse, Sinner: The Secret Diary of a Nymphomaniac and of course, Female Vampire, perhaps Franco's most iconic film, all being crucial entries in his filmography. Standing out even among that crowd is Al otro lado del espejo, a film that in Franco's original Spanish cut, is a strong contender for the title of Franco's best and most heartfelt film.

Before she is set to wed her fiance Arturo, Ana (Emma Cohen) seeks permission from her father (Howard Vernon) whom she has been devoted to her entire life. He gives his approval, only to hang himself soon after. Blaming herself, Ana calls off the engagement and falls into a deep depression, eventually moving to the city to get away from it all. A gifted pianist, Ana finds work playing at a jazz club where she catches the eye of bandmate Bill. While playing, Ana slips into a trance of sorts, seeing the reflection of her father's hanging corpse in a mirror, suddingly finding herself in a scenario walking with Bill, ultimately stabbing him to death, only later to discover that Bill was in fact murdered in real life. It's a situation Ana soon finds herself in whenever she becomes intimate with a man, the ghostly image of her dead father drawing her back to the family home.

In many ways, Al otro lado del espejo (The Other Side of the Mirror) is a kind of spiritual companion to Franco's Venus in Furs (1969) in that both could be described as “jazz films”. Jazz films not within the context of soundtrack, though music is crucial in both films, but jazz films in the sense that both follow a path a trumpet or saxophone solo might take as opposed to the direction taken by conventional narrative. Franco had spoken of envisioning Venus in Furs as taking place within the transcendental headspace of a jazz musician performing a solo and a good portion of The Other Side of the Mirror takes place in that headspace as well. Much like Venus in Furs, and a good portion of Franco's body of work, the hallucinatory, parallel realm Ana's mind enters in The Other Side of the Mirror is also smothered by heavy melancholia, the weight brilliantly carried by Emma Cohen in what quite frankly is the greatest performance in Franco's entire oeuvre. Like Montserrat Prous' Linda in Sinner, Cohen's Ana is a tragic beauty, utterly sympathetic yet also knowingly lethal, though one masterful, final twist from Franco makes Ana's character path hurt just a bit more. Jazz, as stated, obviously plays an essential role in the film, the films theme, the gorgeous “Madeira Love”, being played a variety of ways throughout the film, giving different inflections depending on the mood of the scene, including an extended jazz jam which Franco wisely presents in it's entirety.

Being a Franco film, of course different versions were eventually released, though this particular film is one of the more interesting cases of alternate version syndrome that affects so many of Franco's films. Rather than have some anonymous editor carelessly splice in spicier sex scenes, Franco himself crafted an entirely new story, calling it “Le miroir obscène” or The Obscene Mirror, with newly shot  footage featuring Lina Romay and a re-arranged story, re-naming Ana “Annette” and replacing the suicide of the father with a sister, Marie (Romay). Watching both versions back-to-back is fascinating and Le miroir obscène is a testament to Franco's ingenuity when it comes to tweaking certain story elements to get something new out of familiar material. As Stephen Thrower mentions in his essential tome Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco Volume 1, The Obscene Mirror curiously features scenes cut from the original Spanish version and a third version was released to Italian adult theaters featuring hardcore inserts. The original Spanish cut is, unsurprisingly, the best, Franco even received some rare critical praise in Spain upon its initial release. Emma Cohen was even awarded “Best Actress” from the Spanish Film Critics Circle for her extraordinary work. An extraordinary performance in an extraordinary film, Al otro lado del espejo is an absolutely essential Franco title and one of the standouts of 1973, one of the strongest years for genre film.