The Red Squirrel
| La ardilla roja The Red Squirrel |
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Movie poster
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| Directed by | Julio Médem |
| Produced by |
Fernando de Garcillán Enrique López Lavigne |
| Written by | Julio Médem |
| Starring |
Emma Suárez Nancho Novo |
| Music by |
Txetxo Bengoetxea Alberto Iglesias |
| Cinematography | Gonzalo F. Berridi |
| Edited by | María Elena Sáinz de Rozas |
| Distributed by | Colifilms Distribution |
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Release date
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21 April 1993 |
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Running time
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114 minutes |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish, German |
The Red Squirrel (Spanish: La ardilla roja) is a 1993 drama film by the Spanish filmmaker Julio Médem, starring Emma Suárez and Nancho Novo.
Jota (Novo), a failed musician whose girlfriend has recently left him, is about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge when a girl on a motorcycle, Sofía (Suárez), crashes off it. Rushing to help her, he discovers she has lost her memory, even forgetting her name. After telling the paramedics and staff at the hospital that she is his girlfriend, he later tells her the same. He invents an entire identity for her, giving her the name Lisa, and a history of their relationship according to his own fantasies. With the hospital psychiatrist starting to become suspicious, he spirits her out of the hospital and away on a trip to the 'Ardilla Roja' campsite, which he claims they have been planning for some while. As their relationship becomes intimate, their behaviour sparks the suspicions of a family of fellow campers (Karra Elejalde and María Barranco) and it becomes clear that Lisa/Sofía's memory is not entirely missing and she is hiding her own past secrets—notably, the existence of a psychotic ex-boyfriend, Félix (Carmelo Gómez), who is rampaging across the country in search of her.
Though Medem is a Basque, and many of his films have dealt explicitly with Basque regional identity, a Basque theme is not apparent in The Red Squirrel. The main characters are played by non-Basques (Suárez is from Madrid, Novo from Galicia, Barranco indelibly Andalusian in popular consciousness after her role in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), and much of the action is set at the campsite in La Rioja, a liminal region between the Basque country and Castile.
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