A black-laced wraith appears and exits the bedroom soundlessly. It is a vision of the mad love of his young years, and he follows her into the blinding white hall outside, like a 19th-century figure stumbling onto the set near the end of Kubrick's 2001 . Next he's wondering the streets of Bordeaux in his nightshirt, utterly confused, glimpsing the woman he still loves in passing faces. Goya has his lucid moments in the time remaining to him, but none so vivid as this film's cinematography and design. Paintings come to life, their terrifying, gape-mouthed subjects crowd around their tormented creator in his candlelit nightmares.
Faces dissolve to gray silhouettes against the blackness.
Street scenes take place against theatrically painted backdrops to underscore the artifice of the artist's world. A young Goya wanders like a transparency through galleries of his own paintings as the aged Goya looks on. Red follows this peevish but still lovable man, the color of bloodshed and rage. But red often turns to blue, the color of tranquillity and eternity. Bathed in dramatic nocturnal light, Goya in Bordeaux brings a cinematic dimension to the artist's work and emotional insights into his life.