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An encyclopedia salesman turns amateur pornographer turns Ingmar Bergman wanna-be in Pablo Berger’s endearing debut. It’s 1973 Spain, and plump, balding, world-weary Alfredo (Javier Cámara, the lovelorn nurse in Pedro Almodóvar’s Hable con ella) is hawking encyclopedias door to door with diminishing success while trying not to hear the alarm that’s going off on the biological clock of wife Carmen (Candela Peña). In an offer that seems to solve both their lack of money and their lack of a baby, Alfredo’s suave boss, Don Carlos (Juan Diego), gives the couple an opportunity to help with his new venture, "World Encyclopedia of Reproduction," which turns out to be less ethnographic sex study and more homemade porn project marketed to Scandinavia. Alfredo discovers a passion for directing, Carmen sheds her inhibitions, and both become eager, if awkward, participants. Their naïveté charms; what they’re up to never feels filthy. Carmen doesn’t get pregnant, and Alfredo does get bitten by the Bergman bug. But even as matters turn serious, the levity remains. And Alfredo gets to make the film he wants, both ode to and spoof of The Seventh Seal — excepting the final scene. In Spanish with English subtitles. (91 minutes)
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
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