Set in Barcelona in the 1980s, El Amante Bilingüe takes an ironic approach to Catalan linguistic policies, nationalism and eroticism with a pattern of double identity that was based on elements from the author's life.

Juan Marés (an anagram of the author's name) is a Catalan man from a humble background, the son of a frustrated zarzuela seamstress and an illusionist known as Fu-Ching.

In December 1970, he meets his future wife at a photographic exhibit, when he involves himself with a group organizing a four-day hunger strike to protest the verdict of the 1969 show trials in Burgos.

Norma works for the department of linguistics of the Generalitat regional government, while Juan (or Joan, his Catalan name) is overwhelmed by the social position acquired through the marriage.

Juan retains their apartment in Walden 7, but without his wife's financial support he must eke out a living by playing the accordion and busking for money in the streets of La Rambla.

In this role he is a xarnego from Murcia and a childhood friend of Marés, coming back to Barcelona after years supposedly living as a worker in Germany.

Disguised as Faneca, Juan seduces his lonely neighbor, Griselda, an Andalusian widow who is embracing everything Catalan to start her new life in Barcelona.

He felt a close affinity with novelist Juan Marsé; they had shared similar childhood experiences in their native Barcelona.

Imanol Arias was launched to star status in Spain by his work with Vicente Aranda in El Lute, a film that was a critical and commercial success.

He recalls that the role in El Amante Bilingüe was an exciting challenge in that he had to play a character with dual personalities and different registers.

[6] The film portrays Norma ("Norma" also means "(linguistic) norm", "standard" in Catalan and Spanish), representing the intellectual force of Catalan government policies of linguistic change, as haughty, obsessive and cold, while Juan Marés's disfigurement marks his alignment with the culture of his perfidious wife, whom he wants to regain sexually.

However, it skilfully points out the layered construction of a second identity, that of Juan Faneca, whose black cloak, wide-brimmed hat, scars and eyepatch stand for a grotesque masculine self-image of sexual predominance based on outmoded forms of seduction.

The plot could have remained the same, just changing the scenery from Barcelona to Los Angeles or New York City and, instead of a xarnego, some other type of foreigner — the rest working the same.

He explained: 'I wanted to make cinematographic references to The Invisible Man and The Phantom of the Opera, with more subtle quotations of those film through the use of the right photography in an expressionist style, but that idea had to be sacrificed to photograph Ornella Muti beautifully.

In its pattern of double identities, El Amante Bilingüe resembles two other films by Aranda, Cambio de Sexo and La Pasión Turca: in Cambio de Sexo, a young man with gender dysphoria is driven by his desire to become a woman; in La Pasión Turca, a housewife with a placid life leaves her former identity behind in pursuit of a new persona with a Turkish lover.

Extra items on the DVD include a press conference at the Montreal World Film Festival, a making-of documentary and cast and crew galleries.