Hey folks, Harry here with Harold Hellman continuing his slam bam job at the Seattle International Film Festival! Personally I'm very interested in seeing SEX AND LUCIA, this first film from this set of reviews. I've seen THE RED SQUIRREL and liked it, so seeing Julio Medem's latest is definitely up my alley. Here ya go....
Day 8: SEX AND LUCIA - written and directed by Julio Medem
You know those pretentious European art films that invariably feature a scene of two people pensively murmuring ambiguous nothings to each other on a windswept beach before folding into a tearful, bittersweet embrace? The sort of movie that doesn't bother to conceal or obscure all of the symbolism it's loaded with? And that purports to examine the Big Issues of humanity, like fate and despair and love?
Well, that's exactly the sort of movie "Sex and Lucia" is, a stylized, slowly paced and deeply fraught drama about lovers facing the secret parts of themselves, the kind of movie it's easy to make fun of -- except that there's one important difference: "Sex and Lucia" is also really, really good.
Writer-director Julio Medem uses multiple parallel timelines to follow the courtship of Lucia and Lorenzo; they meet joyfully, but then struggle to stay connected as unexpected problems arise. He's a writer, his calm exterior hiding inner turmoil; she's a waitress who comes on to him with an offer he can't refuse. Initially they're extremely happy, but some of his previous choices come back to haunt him in unfortunate ways. When he suddenly and tragically leaves the picture, she goes off to a mysterious island he's told her about, searching for clues to understand the man she loved.
The film certainly has its Euro-art sheen, with washed-out handheld photography and casually explicit sexual imagery, but it succeeds by giving itself over entirely to its characters instead of treating them as mouthpieces for a filmmaker's latest pseudointellectual musings. The movie doesn't shy away from the ragged emotional edge; whether things are going well or not for the couple, the film is fully committed.
In fact, it's this sense of emotional reality that most preoccupies the film. As a writer, Lorenzo uses his novels to explore, slightly fictionalized, the demons that encircle him, and we see re-enactments of those events with the writer standing in for important characters. This has the effect both of making his history immediate and compelling, as well as introducing significant ambiguity about how closely his prose hews to fact. In the film's worldview, the objective truth of these events doesn't matter, really; what's important is how those events were perceived by the participants, and the emotional echoes that have been left. It's a provocative theme, masterfully handled.
Better yet, the movie is sexy as hell. Like many European filmmakers these days, Medem doesn't shy away from exploring sex as an aspect of the characters' relationships (it's even in the title, fercryinoutloud), and there's some imagery that many viewers will say verges on the pornographic. But the difference is that it's a natural and significant element of how these characters interrelate, and it's never included for shock value or simple prurience. Close-minded audiences may shy away from the brief glimpse of a hand holding an erect penis, for example, but in its emotional context, it makes sense. Lucia and Lorenzo are a randy and playful couple, engaging in striptease games, messing with a Polaroid, and so on; it's enormously refreshing compared to the childish titillations of American movies, and those cliched soft-focus saxophone-accompanied scenes that say nothing about how real people make love.
"Sex and Lucia" is probably too "out there" for most people, but the themes it explores are fascinating and important, and director Medem is in total control of the material from beginning to end. At various times, it's funny, sad, sexy, and quite moving -- in other words, it's got everything you could ask for in a movie. Highly recommended.
***
Day 9: THE RED SQUIRREL - written and directed by
Julio Medem
This 1993 film by Julio Medem is included in this year's festival as a flashback, providing some context for his new film "Sex and Lucia." (His best-known previous film, by the way, is probably "Lovers of the Arctic Circle.") "The Red Squirrel"is a thoroughly unconventional romance rolled up with a disturbing mystery, and shows that while Medem clearly has a specific set of artistic preoccupations, he's capable of exploring them from a variety of perspectives.
The story begins as Jota, a musician, is trying to psych himself into a cliff-jumping suicide. He's interrupted by a motorcycle wreck nearby, and finds the driver, a woman, lying partially unconscious. As he waits with her for the ambulance, he asks her questions to keep her conscious, and finds she has lost her memory in the crash. When help arrives, he accompanies her to the hospital.
It's here that the story takes its first major twist, as Jota, for reasons that are disturbingly unclear at first but will be explained later in the film, tells the amnesiac woman that she's actually his girlfriend. He makes up a name and history for her, and takes her from the hospital to a local campground (called The Red Squirrel), ostensibly so she can relax and try to regain her memory.
In telling this story, Medem somehow manages to achieve an extraordinarily difficult balance; at times, the film is swooningly romantic, but then we remember what's really going on, and we're back to being creeped out by Jota's deception. It's manipulative, yes, but masterfully so, and the ride is therefore enjoyable. And the woman, dubbed Elisa by Jota, isn't just a passive victim, either; at times, she looks at him with an odd expression, and we don't know if she's just thinking about something, or if perhaps she's just remembered a fragment of her life and for reasons of her own is choosing not to tell him.
"The Red Squirrel" isn't as good as Medem's later "Sex and Lucia." There are a handful of flashbacks to a photo shoot for Jota's band, showing them in primitive getups, that are more goofy than anything else. Further, one relationship turns out to be an implausible coincidence, and the mystery of Elisa's identity, when finally revealed, is rather melodramatic and far-fetched; as these revelations occur, it feels like the movie's being invaded by bits of a more conventional (and less interesting) thriller. We also get two moments of completely unnecessary gore, once briefly in the hospital, and then again, more extensively, during the climax. The second especially is distasteful and quite over-the-top, and belongs in a different movie. It's fairly brief, though, so if you're squeamish, look away when you see the dark stranger grab the scissors.
Still, all in all, "The Red Squirrel" is an assured and, for a particular kind of viewer, entertaining film. It's funnier than "Sex and Lucia," and while it isn't as explicit, it's still pretty sexy. It's a measure of how good Medem is that the story works at all; when the story is revealed in full, you recognize that a potential American remake, while no doubt well-intended, would suck because it would remove all of the emotional ambiguity and the interesting themes of identity and self-perception. "The Red Squirrel" is kind of uneven, but it most definitely does not suck.
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