That Happy Couple

After their time at the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas (IIEC), Berlanga and Bardem joined the Altamira project, a production company founded by several professors and advanced students with the aim of making neorealist-influenced films. For this film, the two filmmakers will reformulate a previous script to debut with this costumbrist comedy, no stranger to humanism and the bitterness of contemporary life. Starring Fernando Fernán Gómez and Elvira Quintillá, well accompanied by a host of supporting actors, this film is a critical look at the incipient consumer society that hides, at the same time, the recognition of the vitality of Madrid's public space.

Synopsis: In Madrid in the 1950s, the modest married couple Juan and Carmen live in a rented room with kitchen facilities. Juan works as an electrician in the cinema and is a disenchanted man who tries to progress in life in a practical way. To do so, he takes a correspondence course to become a radio technician and, later, he tries to set up a photography business using the virgin film tails from his studio, which even leads him to lose his own job. For her part, Carmen is an idealistic seamstress, who takes refuge in the movies, the radio, and the magazines of the heart, while she lives convinced that the solution to her problems will come through the lottery or contests. Her dream comes true when she and her husband are chosen by the soap brand Florit as the «Happy couple».