The Girl of Your Dreams

The Girl of Your Dreams is a 1998 Spanish drama film produced and directed by Fernando Trueba. Set during the Spanish Civil War, it centers on a fictional Andalusian actress (Penélope Cruz) making a film in Nazi Germany who becomes the object of Joseph Goebbels' attentions. Plot In 1938, while Spain is in the grip of civil war, a film team from territory held by Franco's rebels are invited to the co-production in Berlin of a musical set in 19th-century Andalusia, to be shot in separate Spanish and German versions. At first happy to be working away from their war-torn country, the group find life under Nazism increasingly unpleasant and dangerous. Macarena, their attractive star, soon catches the eye of Goebbels, the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, who is determined to bed her. Though she finds him repulsive, and prefers the company of Blas, the married director of the Spanish version, it is made clear to her that for the sake of the project and of Hispano-German relations she must comply. When she points out that the extras in the film look ridiculously inauthentic, being tall and fair-haired, they are replaced by short dark Jewish and Romani prisoners from a concentration camp, under armed SS guards. An extra with whom she sympathises, a handsome Russian called Leo, escapes the guards and she smuggles him into the villa where Goebbels has installed her. When Goebbels calls round, Leo knocks him out cold.