"Bilbao is a work of art.

LE QUOTIDIEN DE PARI

"An unusual and beautiful film. Many of the world critics in general and the Spanish critics in particular were left speechless by the film.

Bilbao does not seem to be a Spanish film. It would have been more logical for the film to be made in New York. Its structure, its external form and the subject matter are more related to an affluent cinema where everything is possible because the industrial framework favours and promotes its assimilation.

It is an unusual film because it shows neither a passing nor a current fashion but one of human beings' key radical obsession; and because it is done with complete freedom in relation to traditional parametres, both at narrative and at moral levels. (...) Bilbao is a film that goes much further than the problems and determining factors from Franco's era and connects to the anguish of man and the individual.

It is an unusual film that proves once more that the story of the author's obsessions and life experiences connect much more easily with the rest of the world than other people's stories."

EL PAIS 26/05/1978
Angel S. Harguindey

"The films of legendary Spanish director Bigas Luna ((...) Brilliant and iconoclastic director) literally overflow with symbolist and surrealist images, drawn from his seemingly inexhaustible passion for sex, food and his native Catalunya. Everything is oversized in Luna's universe, from women's breasts to male egos; one of his great gifts as a filmmaker is to be able to satirize Spanish culture without deflating any of its mysteries.

Bilbao (...) brought him international attention. The disturbing first-person narrative of an emotionally-crippled voyeur, Bilbao also reverberated with political implications: the title refers to both a prostitute's name and the industrial capital of the Basque region, long a centre of resistance to Castilian control.

A nightmarish urban vision as powerful in its way as Scorsese's Taxi Driver."

AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE

"Leo (the main character ) is Loia Castel's son in I Pugni in Tasca, of Michael Piccoli's in Tamaño Natural, of De Niro's in Taxi Driver... More than for the character himself, for the way it is filmed. But Bigas Lunas' creature is more rough, less perfect. Angel Jové lends an original presence, with some strength and a ridiculous voice skillfully concealed by Bigas Lunas. (...)

An original and odd film which has little or nothing in common with the usual Spanish cinema; this is enough in itself. This film will be part of the record on eroticism and Spanish gruesomeness."

EL PAIS
Fernando Trueba

"One of Bigas Lunas' most obsessive films."

"One of the Catalan cinema's riskiest and more innovative proposals."

FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA

"A good deal of the world critics and the Spanish critics were left speechless by Bilbao."

EL PAIS
Angel S. Harguindey

"A disturbing and exasperating work, and one of the most rigorous exercises ever to be produced in this country. This is the story of a sick and destructive passion. The film turns into a restless, disturbance obsession portrayed in sordid ugliness and captured by splendid photography. This is a gruesome nightmare developed without any concession."

FOTOGRAMAS

"A remarkable film, and an audacious and splendid production."

LA NACION
Claudio España

"Here is a work of art on gruesomeness and obsessions. The 1979 Cannes Festival was dazzled by this claustrophobic, paranoid and sickly film which narrates the story of a colourless man whose private life is determined by his relationship with an older woman and a passion for erotic fetishism.

(...) A good part of the success of the film is based on the main character, Angel Jové's zombie look with his devastating lack of expression. (...) Isabel Pisano is tops."

CRITICALIA
E. Colmena

"Bilbao is a beautiful and terrible film by Spanish director Bigas Lunas (...) narrated in the first person.

The film is very good and repulsive at the same time."

CORRIERE DELLA SERA
Lletta Tornaduanl