The Plot Thickens -- Never-Ending Twists And Turns Give `Aventurera' A Campy Flair

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

XXX "Aventurera," with Ninon Sevilla, Tito Junco, Andrea Palma, Ruben Rojo. Directed by Alberto Gout, from a script by Alvaro Custodio and Carlos Sampelayo. Varsity. No rating; includes several brothel scenes. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Popular at the 1995 Seattle International Film Festival, where it had its local premiere, this 45-year-old Mexican musical stars Cuban-born Ninon Sevilla as Elena, the proud and pampered daughter of a wealthy man.

Before the movie is 10 minutes old, he shoots himself, her mother runs off with a lover, and Elena finds herself forced to get a job. She gets pinched or fondled every time she tries out for the roles of maid or secretary, and doesn't stay long wherever she's placed.

Broke and starving, she runs into an old acquaintance who takes her out for dinner, promises her a respectable job and wage, then takes her to a brothel that she believes is a respectable residence. Before she can quite figure out what's happened to her, Elena is drugged and a heartless madame sends a series of sleazy customers to her room.

It's quite an opening, but then the whole movie is like that: a major shock or plot twist every few minutes, usually underlined by loud music that seems to have escaped from a vintage Joan Crawford melodrama.

There's much more to that madame, and her accomplice, than those opening scenes suggest. The same goes for Elena, who develops a considerable appetite for crime and revenge before this 93-minute movie reaches its breathless finale. "The plot thickens" could have been coined for it.

Like the major-studio movies produced in pre-Code Hollywood, "Aventurera" is surprisingly upfront about sexuality. Prostitutes, pimps, traitorous lovers and "white slavers" are everywhere; the script communicates a devastating post-war skepticism about human behavior. This frankness may have had something to do with the fact that it was kept out of American theaters in the 1950s, although it was well-known in Europe at the time.

For whatever reason, it makes most mainstream movies from the early 1950s, even the sexy Italian ones with Sophia Loren or Silvano Mangano, seem pretty tame.

And it's still fairly steamy, thanks largely to Sevilla's performance, which suggests both Rita Hayworth's sultry Gilda and the absurdity of Carmen Miranda's fruit-topped dancers.

As the madame with the big secret, Andrea Palma is a worthy opponent, while Tito Junco is expressively tawdry as the old pal who lures Elena into prostitution and robbery. Ruben Rojo is almost credible as Elena's absurdly naive fiance, who's utterly blind to the corruption around him. The episode in which Elena opens his eyes predates a nearly identical scene in Elia Kazan's "East of Eden" by five years.

Directed by veteran filmmaker Albert Gout, "Aventurera" (adventuress) isn't quite the Spanish-language festival discovery that "I Am Cuba" turned out to be. But it's handled with a campy flair that's tough to resist.