My favorite scene: Queen Joan going psycho
By far my FAVORITE scene in "Mad Love" is the segment where Queen Joan goes absolutely psycho in the presence of her ladies-in-waiting and the group of nobles pleading for her intercession in a plot to dethrone her.
SPOILERS*****SPOILERS*****SPOILERS
A group of nobles led by a patriotic, high-aristocrat admiral meet with Queen Joan in her bedroom. The admiral is trying to warn the young queen of a plot by her husband, Archduke of Austria, Phillip the Handsome, to have her incarcerated for being psychologically unfit so that the archduke can rule the kingdom of Castile alone.
From the very beginning, the young, nubile queen Joan (Juana) has been appallingly sexually obsessed by her incredibly handsome studly archduke husband, Phillip. True, this dude looks like he belongs on the covers of paperback women's romance novels. Both persons, queen Joan and archduke Phillip appear to be cursed people in spite of their good looks, sexual charm and charisma, noble birth and wealth and beloved celebrity status. Phillip's incredible handsome looks come with Fate's ironic price; the man is a compulsive sex addict, so much so that he feels compulsion to visit even roadside brothels for his addictive dose of sexual thrills and kicks. It was another ironic comedic twist when the sex addict archduke Phillip stiffs (rips off) the pimp captain who owned Aixa (Beatriz). The pimp captain asks the archduke for an outlandish sum of 500 escudos for Aixa'z sexual favors, the day after letting the archduke get a voyeuristic look of Aixa undressing nude in a dressing room. I still wonder if the archduke was looking through a one-way mirror, or if Aixa was boldly starring at the archduke's face, pretending she was looking a mirror. When the pimp captain walks outside to his horse, soldiers arrest him. There is no explanation for the arrest and we don't see the captain again in the movie. But that was one royal back stab, no pun intended.
It's almost funny in a Greek tragedy sense of the word. In the middle of the admiral's intercession, Lady Elvira (herself a high noblewoman) brings in the ladies-in-waiting. The admiral and the nobles are suitably bewildered when Queen Joan breaks off the discussion and becomes agitated and engrossed in a handwriting test of her ladies-in-waiting. None of the young women's writing matches, except for the last one, who turns out to be illiterate despite her own aristocrat origin. Queen Joan then dismisses the ladies and blows off the admirals, waving them away in a flippant manner as if they were fan groupies. It's almost funny to see her doing that.
It gets funnier and I love watching the next segment over and over. Lady Elvira then brings in Aixa, now going by the nome de guerre of Beatriz de Bobadilla, purportedly the niece of one of the noblemen, who, ironically is in the group of nobles visiting queen Joan.
Beatriz for all her own beauty and sexuality shows that she has a set of brass balls by openly and defiantly admitting her own love for the archduke and that the archduke loves her (Beatriz) and more so sexually to boot.
These are fighting words for queen Joan, who is by now apoplectic with rage and going *beep* The seven month pregnant queen Joan goes out into the hallway, grabs two swords from her guardsmen and stalks back into her bedroom. She tosses one sword to the ground at the feet of a stunned Beatriz, challenging her to a duel. I loved it when Queen Joan curses Beatriz that either she pick up the sword and fight or Joan will summon Beatriz's master, Satan. Queen Joan, showing what a pair of brass balls she herself has, despite being seven months pregnant, scares Beatriz into fleeing from the room.
I found the whole scene entertaining, watching these two beautiful young women fighting over a studly hunk archduke. But I give queen Joan great credit by handling the situation herself and not ordering Beatriz's arrest or anything else like that. Women who find themselves cuckcolded often want to take the situation into their own hands rather than let other people do the dirty work for them and that is fair.
Queen Joan is shaking with rage, shaking the sword in her hand and hurling curses at the now-vanished Beatriz and her lover (the archduke) wishing both dead with the black death (bubonic plague). Ironically (how many times did I use that word?) archduke Phillip shortly expires from a gross infection of syphillis, contracted by who knows. Oddly, Queen Joan and Beatriz haven't contracted the disease themselves. Joan goes on to outlive Phillip by almost half a century. I'm grossed out watching the ending scenes of mad Joan kissing her dying husband's infected body all over, expressing her eternal love and affection for him while refusing to grant him the forgiveness he is begging for with his final breaths. Strange way for a man to go out of this world, his wife kissing and hugging him, professing her undying love, but not forgiving him. He probably died perplexed about what she was thinking. Both Joan and Phillip never really knew each other. In some way they remained strangers to each other, despite Joan's obsession for Phillip as if he were her prized possession. There were times when she treated Phillip like a sexual stud mustang. But Phillip is no saint with his sexual addiction and proclivities. I do think that in his own strange way, Phillip did love Joan. But he was a prisoner of his own psychological and moral flaws.
In the end, "Mad Love" is one more take on the age-old axiom that all the money, wealth, fame, social status, good looks, et al, doesn't always translate into lasting happiness. On the moral level you can't blame Joan and Phillip for being born with all that good fortune. They didn't ask for it. But they would find themselves more cursed by it all than blessed with it. If you don't know what I mean, try looking into the lives of American celebrities past and present and see what happened to them.