El portero

El portero is an anomaly within Gonzalo Suárez’s filmography. Based on a text by another author and shaped by a more traditional, everyday comic logic than audiences had come to expect from his cinema, the film approaches the daily reality of a postwar Spanish village with touches of the western genre, as contemporary critics described it. Its two protagonists, played by Carmelo Gómez and Maribel Verdú, offer a humanist portrayal of the war’s losers.

Synopsis: In 1948, Ramiro Forteza, a former football goalkeeper who once played in the top division, makes a living by traveling from village to village, challenging locals to take penalty kicks against him, with a few coins at stake for anyone who manages to beat him. [ICAA Database].