Broken Toys

Summers develops a quasi-autobiographical fictional frame for an inquiry into a gallery of Spanish celebrities who have decayed into something worse than total abandonment. The film visits a popular singer, a champion prize fighter who has been committed to an asylum, and an ancient matador returning to the ring among many others to probe the anomie that comes with fame as a privilege at its apex and a curse at its bitter end. This film treads somewhere between what could have been a legitimate "essay film" and a commercial "where are they now" featurette. The treasure hunt for the "campeón maldito" or "estrella maldita" (cursed champ or star) seems to be a fixture of Spanish popular culture today (as of course it is in a coarser way today in Anglo-American culture). In any event, this is an interesting instance of this.