Sexy and (but?) intelligent filmmaking (Sex and Lucia (DVD))

Member Name: JonathanS

Product:	Sex and Lucia (DVD)
Date:	19/06/02 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good and attractive cast, compelling story, extremely atmospheric

Disadvantages: Drags towards the end

Sex and Lucia is a Spanish film, written and directed by Julio Medem, probably best known for The Lovers of the Arctic Circle. It is one of those films that it is very hard to classify into a particular genre. Perhaps 'erotic drama' comes closest.

As the film opens, we see Lucia (Paz Vega), a waitress in Madrid, having a confused conversation regarding, amongst other things, an island, with her evidently depressed boyfriend. When she goes home, she finds him missing, and fears the worst, and when she then gets a phone call from a policeman who starts to explain about an accident, she runs away, going to the island. The film then makes one of its many jumps in time, to a man, Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa) and woman, Elena (Najwa Nimri), virtual strangers to each other, making love in the ocean.

Eventually we learn that Lorenzo is a writer, and Lucia became his girlfriend, and helped to overcome his writers block through a passionate, sex-filled relationship. We also learn that Elena has a daughter, Luna, who in turn has a babysitter, Belen (Elena Anaya), whose mother stars in pornographic films, and who lusts after her mother's boyfriend, Carlos (Daniel Freire). These characters and the events that link them exist both in the film and in the book Lorenzo is in the middle of writing, and as Lucia reads more of the book she (and the audience) gradually piece together more of how everything links together.

Sex and Lucia has an extremely mediterranean feel to it. The whole look of the film is bleached, as if by the hot sun, and much of the story takes place on what is apparently an unnamed mediterranean island riddled with caves. There is an eerie and mysterious atmosphere to much that happens, often during a full moon, with the line between fact and fiction becoming increasingly blurred as the film progresses. This is also part of the recent trend of European films, such as Intimacy and Romance, to become ever more explicit in its depict
ions of sex, here done in a more erotic way than the sometimes brutal treatment of the other two films, such that it is just another part of the atmosphere of the film.

Much of the strength of the film comes from the way that the story and interconnections are gradually revealed. This can at times be extremely confusing, especially when the film jumps in time without giving you any clear cue that it's doing so. Despite this, you are always given enough hints and information to work it out eventually, which is quite satisfying if you're willing to make the effort. The gradually revealed mystery of what happened to Lorenzo keeps the film compelling and interesting for most of its over two hours length, as does the intensity of the portrayal of his relationship with Lucia. The performances are uniformly convincing, making sure that the risk of melodrama is avoided.

If one thing lets down Sex and Lucia, it is the last twenty or so minutes. By then, most of the pieces of the puzzle are in place to the viewer, it just remains for the characters on screen to put them together and reach some form of conclusion, but this is handled clumsily, the film drags, and the end, though in a way poetic, is somehow unsatisfying.

Despite this reservation, Sex and Lucia is an atmospherically bleached out, erotically charged, intricately woven puzzle of a film that is always interesting to watch, and rewarding to viewers willing to put in the effort to follow the story.

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