Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Alex is one of our regular chatters, and while I question the sanity of anyone who says he doesn’t like the cinematography of APOCALYPSE NOW, he’s a pretty good egg overall. He splits his time between the U.S. and Mexico, and today he’s got a look at a new Mexican film that I haven’t heard about. Sounds like it might be for good reason, based on his reaction. Check it out...
AMARTEDUELE (MEXICO, 2002)
A review by Alexander DeLarge
This is the latest movie from director Fernando Sariñana, who has seen better, if never actually “great” days. AmarTeDuele (which has a playful title that could either be interpreted as Loving You Hurts or Love Hurts) tells the story of Renata and Ulises, young lovers separated by financial issues (he, a piss poor comic-book-reading wannabe muralist, and she, a wealthy society girl with a social conscience) who will fight for their idyllic candid smiles and heavy-petting against the mores of a painfully underdeveloped group of friends with a cartoonish obsession about social classes.
This is one of those movies that are openly marketed as “youth films”, but the problem resides in the fact that the trite musings of a middle aged director trying to make a hip movie end up being as relevant to most people’s experience of youthful love as Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi must be to Tony Hawks. However awful the script is (courtesy of renowned marketing freak Carolina Rivera), the true offender here is Sariñana, who should really know better. After enduring this movie, I want to personally stomp on the man’s camera. And of course, as usual, Sariñana had to stick his little girl, Ximena Sariñana, like he does in all of his movies – you can think of her as a third world Tori Spelling, if you will.
The movie inexplicably shifts to from color to black and white, from normal film resolution to extremely low res and final-cut-ish slow motion tricks, (actually, the use of black and white is hinted at not-so-subtly when our dear Aztec Romeo says “We’re in your world now…”, the explanation of it is so weak though that I assume, nay, PRAY TO GOD, that there’s an alternate motive that I completely missed). The similarities to the story of Romeo and Juliet are not exactly cleverly hidden in the context either. There’s a balcony scene. There’s an altercate at a party at Renata’s. There’s a Tybalt. There’s a highly predictable death. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But the evil Sariñana, not content with merely ripping off Shakespeare, decides to rip off everyone else while doing it. There are plenty of shots of Ulises looking and Renata through glass, mimicking the shots from the fish tank from Baz Luhrman’s ROMEO + JULIET. Some parts reek of Soderbergh and Larry Clark – Sariñana even attempts to recreate Aronofsky’s steadicam-strapped-on-the-actor trick, with very pathetic results.
Furthermore, there are hordes of characters that didn’t need to be there and some severely unnecessary nudity from Renata’s part. There’s also a ridiculous subplot about a fantasy comic-book world where everyone is “treated equally”. There’s one scene that actually plays out as if you were watching a comic book (with dialogue balloons and everything) that should elicit collective eye-rolling. Give me a fucking break. Ulises even has a brother with token mental retardation for no other reason besides making us feel all fuzzy inside when we think of how nice he is to his retarded brother. It’s every bit as insulting as my words.
This is a movie for young boys and girls who have yet to experience being in love, for only they could stand for such a lazy, uninspired take on young infatuation. This is easily the worst Mexican movie of the last 3 years, and a giant step back from the thriving crop of challenging and entertaining Mexican films.
Skip it, for god’s sake, skip it.
Alexander DeLarge
P.S. Excuse my faulty English, it’s my second language.
No worries, man. You got your point across, loud and clear.
"Moriarty" out.
