Gran Slalom (1996, Spain)

A well-developed comedy about a police lieutenant, Manuel, (Juanjo Puigcorbé) who is driving to a mountain hotel resort for an important meeting. His car breaks down on the mountain road, and after waiting for hours in the freezing cold, he is eventually rescued by a young woman, Vicky, (Laura del Sol) who tows him to the hotel: she is driving to the same place herself.

When they check in, Manuel decides to try his luck and goes to her room and they have sex in the shower. But at this minute Vicky's husband and a business client -- the Mayor -- arrive and barge into the room. Vicky pretends that she is in the middle of showering, and manages to pick up Manuel's clothes, which he discarded on the floor of the main room, and put them on the window ledge outside. Unfortunately they fall off, into the car park below.

It's obvious that Vicky's husband and the client are there to stay, so in desperation Vicky dresses Manuel in a skirt and top and manages to put a hood over his hair; she quickly shaves off his moustache, and then sees him out of the room, to her husband's surprise. At this stage his appearance as a woman is pretty rudimentary.

But by now the police have started to investigate the apparently abandoned clothes and the broken down car, and Manuel can't retrieve either, so still dressed in the skirt, he has to return to Vicky's room.

She lets him in but her husband and the mayor are still there. The mayor has become attracted to her and Vicky decides the only way out is to dress Manuel more fully as a woman -- to be called Manola -- and to agree to go out as a foursome. This happens, and the mayor gets more amorous than ever. But at a police roadblock, the police inform the mayor that a body has been found, presumed to be Manuel's, and that Manuel's wife is being flown in.

Manuel now has no easy way to cut short his masquerade, and things go from bad to worse. Escaping from the amorous mayor, Manuel runs down the road and is picked up by a plain clothes policeman who is unknown to him; in trying to make good his escape, Manuel gets some cuts and bruises, and eventually finding a rest room, Manuel is helped to clean himself up by two transsexuals, Diana (Enrique San Francisco, pic right) and Tamara (Fernando Guillén Cuervo, pic below), who assume him to be a transvestite and help him to look a bit more feminine.

The body has been identified as animal remains, so the emergency is reduced a little; Manuel sees a way to get his own clothes back and to meet up with his wife, and in a thrilling finale he eventually succeeds.

The whole story is entirely unbelievable, and Manuel is not at all presentable as a female, but somehow the whole thing is good entertainment all the same. Highly recommended. Both the actors playing the transsexuals have a long string of film credits, but with no other transgender roles so far as I could see.

HF March 2007

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