Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

The Girl of Your Dreams

(La niña de tus ojos, Spain, 1998)

Sometime in the ‘30s, a film company from Spain goes to Germany to make a film. Joseph Goebbels becomes infatuated with the star (Penelope Cruz, she falls in love with a Jewish prisoner being used as an extra. It’s played mostly as a comedy, but often doesn’t seem to know what it’s going to be. It looks good, but that’s about all. I was reminded of To Be or Not to Be, either the Jack Benny or Mel Brooks versions, trying to set a comedy against the background of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Ernst Lubitsch did it well; Mel Brooks did okay. This one didn’t.