From his debut feature Torremolinos 73, Pablo Berger has created a personal film about filmmaking through the unlikely conduit of 1970s pornography. Carol Murphy talks to him about Bergman, the craft of the filmmaker, and of course 'porno-chic'.

Preparing for a 45 minute interview with a first-time feature film writer and director is like preparing to go on a blind date. There is nothing to glean from the scant interviews and articles which are available. If they have their head screwed on they will be suitably loquacious and enthusiastic about their 'baby', but you just never know. Couple this with the fact that I was due to meet Pablo Berger, the Basque writer and director of Torremolinos 73 in the Haslitz Hotel on Frith Street in London, which is like a fetishized 17th century time warp. Even though Torremolinos 73 is a 1970s period comedy I was not going to expect a stand up comic, so to break the ice I armed myself with stories of my holiday to Torremolinos in 1978 with my gargantuan and ever expanding Northern Irish family. But no need, Berger was a talker!

Torremolinos 73 is an unorthodox love story. Alfredo and Carmen are happy in the banal existence of their day-to-day lives, Alfredo is a failing door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman and Carmen is his traditional 70s housewife who yearns to have a baby. It is 1973 and the Franco era is almost at an end, as are Alfredo's finances until he is offered the lucrative opportunity to make Super 8 movies with his wife for the bogus 'Scandinavian World Encyclopaedia of Reproduction'. Like naïve eager beavers they enter into an apprenticeship in lo-fi home-grown porn. Carmen becomes an international sex symbol, while Alfredo develops a passion for all things Begmanesque.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 104.