La Buena Estrella

La buena estrella (released in English as Lucky Star) is a 1997 Spanish drama film directed by Ricardo Franco, about a castrated butcher who takes in a pregnant woman he rescues from a street beating and raises her daughter as his own. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, opened in Spanish cinemas on 30 May 1997, and won five Goya Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.^{1 • 2 • 3 • 4} It was the last film Franco completed; he died of a heart attack in May 1998 during the shooting of Lágrimas negras.⁵

Production

The project reached Franco by way of the producer Pedro Costa. According to an interview Franco gave at Cannes in May 1997, Costa had originally commissioned the film from Juanma Bajo Ulloa; after the two parted ways, Franco took it on. He said he changed the original conception because of his growing aversion to violence: the first version dealt more with wickedness than with goodness, and he reworked it around kindness.⁷ Franco explained his intention before shooting in these words: he dreamed that "the goodness that dwells in every heart might find a way to manifest itself with complete sincerity".⁸

The Spanish film registry (ICAA) records shooting from 2 December 1996 to 8 March 1997, with 35 shooting days in Madrid, on 35 mm film.² Production companies included Enrique Cerezo Producciones Cinematográficas, Pedro Costa Producciones Cinematográficas, GA&A Productions, Mat Films, Eurimages, and Televisión Española (TVE).^{1 • 9} Tote Trenas was the cinematographer, Eva Gancedo composed the score, Esperanza Cobos edited, and Juan Botella designed the production.^{1 • 3} Gancedo's music was scored for two string voices and a piano.⁵

Release and reception

The film was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the 50th Cannes Festival in May 1997, where the Ecumenical Jury gave it a Special Mention.^{3 • 1} The critic Ángel Fernández-Santos, writing in El País from Cannes, called it "a harsh and yet most tender story of pain, misfortune and, finally, triangular love" and "a formidable film".¹⁰ A review in the magazine ACEprensa noted that the film aroused enthusiastic interest in the open discussion after its Cannes screening.⁸

Spanish box office. The film opened in Spanish cinemas on 30 May 1997.² El País reported in late June 1997 that it had drawn 160,406 spectators in barely three weeks.¹¹ The ICAA registry records a final total of 684,522 spectators and €2,399,560.71 in receipts.² A retrospective essay in the Cervantes Institute's Rinconete gives the attendance figure as 684,393 and notes that the film cost a little over one million euros, at a time when its release was followed within months by the worldwide saturation of screens by Titanic.⁵

On FilmAffinity the film holds a user rating of 6.9 from more than 20,000 votes and ranks 124th on the site's list of the best Spanish films.¹² On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a Tomatometer score of 60% from one critic review, with an audience rating of 3.4 out of 5 from more than 50 ratings.⁹

Awards

At the 12th Goya Awards, held in February 1998, La buena estrella was the night's big winner, taking five prizes: Best Film, Best Director (Ricardo Franco), Best Lead Actor (Antonio Resines), Best Original Screenplay (Franco and Ángeles González-Sinde), and Best Original Score (Eva Gancedo).⁴ The ICAA registry also lists a Goya nomination for Best Lead Actress (Maribel Verdú) among seven nominations in total.²

Other honors recorded by the Cervantes Institute and the ICAA include:^{1 • 2}

• Festival de Mar del Plata 1997: Best Director, and Best Actor shared by Resines and Mollà.¹
• Premios Forqué: Best Film.¹
• Festival Internacional de San Diego: Best Film.¹
• Encuentros de Cine Español de la Universidad de Nantes, 1998: audience prize.²
• Premios de la Unión de Actores de Madrid, 1998: Best Film Actor for Jordi Mollà.²

The same year the film was released, Franco received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.¹

Ricardo Franco and the film's place in his career

Ricardo Franco (Madrid, 1948–1998) was a director, screenwriter, and actor prominent in Spanish cinema of the late twentieth century, associated with the group of filmmakers known as the Escuela de Argüelles, which included José Luis Cuerda and Emilio Martínez-Lázaro. He had earlier directed Pascual Duarte (1976), an adaptation of Camilo José Cela's novel, and Berlín Blues (1988).¹

The Cervantes Institute's film notes call La buena estrella the most brilliant film of his career, the work that returned him to the center of Spanish auteur cinema and won unanimous critical applause.¹ It was the last film he finished. He died suddenly of a heart attack in May 1998, at 48, during the shooting of Lágrimas negras, which had to be completed by its co-director Fernando Bauluz.^{1 • 5} The Argentine newspaper Página/12, reviewing the film at the Mar del Plata festival, observed that the terminal state of Franco's health while shooting, including his diabetes and increasing blindness, explained the film's funereal atmosphere, and described it as a three-person melodrama and a tragedy of losers.¹³

References

1. La buena estrella (1997), Hojas de sala, CVC, Instituto Cervantes
2. BUENA ESTRELLA, LA, ficha de calificación, Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA)
3. LA BUENA ESTRELLA, Festival de Cannes
4. Miguel Ángel Villena, "'La buena estrella', gran triunfadora de los Goya", El País, 1 February 1998
5. José Ángel Lázaro, "Veinte años de un cierto cine español (20). 'La buena estrella'", Rinconete, CVC, 15 February 2018
6. LA BUENA ESTRELLA / The Lucky Star, San Sebastián Film Festival 1997, Made in Spanish
7. Andrés Fernández Rubio, "'Cada vez aguanto peor la violencia', dice el director", El País, 16 May 1997
8. Pedro Antonio Urbina, "La buena estrella", ACEprensa, 25 June 1997
9. Lucky Star (La buena estrella), Rotten Tomatoes
10. Ángel Fernández-Santos, "Ricardo Franco presenta 'La buena estrella', hermosa y formidable película de amor", El País, 16 May 1997
11. "El 17% de cuota, una cifra mágica", El País, 25 June 1997
12. La buena estrella (1997), FilmAffinity
13. Horacio Bernades, "Desgracia para tres", Página/12, 27 November 1998

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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