El Lute: camina o revienta

El Lute: camina o revienta (English: El Lute: run for your life) is a 1987 Spanish film written and directed by Vicente Aranda, based on the memoirs of Eleuterio Sánchez, “El Lute”, a delinquent who became notorious in Spain for his jail escapes in the 60's. It stars Imanol Arias and Victoria Abril. The film was a hit in Spain and made a big star of his leading actor. It was nominated to four Goya Awards (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress) and is considered among the best Spanish films of the 80s. The film narrates only the early criminal years of El Lute. The second part, El Lute II: mañana sere libre, continues his story.

Synopsis

In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of gypsies have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed “El Lute”, steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail.

El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a gypsy shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.

The Guardia Civil catch up with him fast. He is arrested again, but even under torture, he refuses to reveal the identities of his partners in crime. Despite this, they are rounded up and all three are sentenced to death for the murder they committed while robbing the jewelry store. A last minute reprieve by General Franco saves their lives in the last minute, commuting the sentence.

Later, while being escorted by two civil guards in a train, El Lute manages to escape, eluding a nationwide manhunt for several weeks despite having a broken arm. The Civil Guards eventually track him down and return him to prison.

El Lute, thanks to his daring escapes from police custody and anti-Franco stance, becomes a most uncommon folk hero.

Cast

• Imanol Arias ... Eleuterio
• Victoria Abril ... Chelo
• Antonio Valero ... Medrano
• Carlos Tristancho ...Augudo
• Margarita Calahorra ... Chelos’s mother

Reception

El Lute:camina o revienta opened in September 1987 at the San Sebastian International Film Festival where Imanol Arias and Victoria Abril obtained the awards as best actor and best actress. In Spain, the film was a great success with critics and audiences.

Analysis

Director, Vicente Aranda became well known in the 1980s due to his adaptations of literary works to the big screen. For El Lute, camina o revienta, Aranda based his film on the autobiography of the infamous Spanish delinquent Eleuterio Sánchez, El Lute''.

Aranda split El Lute’s adventures in two features films : El Lute: camina o revienta (1987) (El Lute, run for your life), and El Lute II, mañana seré libre (1988) (El Lute Tomorrow I’ll be Free). The film is sometime grim but always gripping. Despite its length it never, flags in interest, both in respect to the human adventures being lived and in its reflection of the final years of Franco’s Spain. El Lute forced by social deprivation into delinquency in the 1960s is elevated to folk hero by way of his resistance to authoritarian injustice. Aranda’s hybrid combination of period drama, thriller and social realism reveals how the criminal career of this petty thief was manipulated and exploited by the authorities as a diversionary tactic at the time of political unrest. The film has a strong realistic and political tone and it is a resounding critique of Franco’s regime and its brutal treatment of an oppressed minority.

Theme

The main theme of the film is the powerful individual response to injustice.

Tag line

Survival by any means was his only option

DVD release

El Lute: camina o revienta is available in Region 1 DVD in Spanish with English subtitles. The second part, El Lute II: mañana sere libre, is also included in the same DVD. The transferred is not of good quality.