Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Cine Europa Film Festival

Now in its 8th year, the Cine Europa Film Festival is eagerly awaited by
all aficionados of European cinema.

Organised by the Embassies of the European Union Member States and the
Delegation of the European Commission in Manila the festival will take
place at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, EDSA cor. Shaw Blvd. (easy access by
MRT, plenty of parking available) from Thursday, Sept. 22 to Sunday, Oct
02, 2005.

Please find attached a draft flyer with the screening schedule and a brief
synopsis of each films. I have also attached some more information about
the German film "Kroko". Films will be shown in the original language
with English subtitles.

Admission is free!

Opening night on Thursday, Sept. 22:
Invitation only!

Please tell your family, friends, neighbours, badminton partner, fellow
choir members, gym buddy etc. about Cine Europa 8 and encourage everyone
to come and watch the films.

For your information, after Manila Cine Europa 8 will move on to Davao
(Oct. 07 to 09) and Cebu (Oct. 14 to 16).

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

CRASH

I went to see a movie at SM last Friday. It was a movie of Paul Haggis, CRASH (producer of Million Dollar Baby). The editing was good, acting was par excellence. This movie is heavy in dialogue, so I advise that you listen carefully while watching ... ask questions after the movie.

I'd seen the various ways we discriminate against each other in everyday life. I'd seen how we rationalize and excuse it, how we organize our lives so that we dont have to deal with it, and how we deny that discrimination exists. The movie is not really about race or class, it's about fear of strangers. It's about intolerance and compassion; about how we all hate to be judged but see no contradiction in judging others.

We live in a society of fear, where people use that fear in order to control us, and the media uses that fear to manipulate us. The movie wants to discuss that and how that fear resonates and distorts how we perceive the world around us. Our reality is so detached that I think it requires a catastrophic event to make us either feel or acknowledge what's actually going on. We are too comfortable, way too comfortable.

It is a film that escapes genre categorization because it escapes tonal categorization. This is a film about real life. It's also something of a fable and a morality play. And it's a story of hope. There's levity, heartbreak, tragedy, beauty, comedy. You will see in Crash how fragile humanity is in general and how the slightest choice you make, which may not seem that important at the time, can end up having huge ramifications, a ripple effect way beyond yourself.

Probably one of my favorite movies this year!

Friday, March 18, 2005

Film Reviews

Deadline for submission hard copies of Film Reviews will be March 19, 2005 (Saturday) before the final examinations.

Due to requests coming from students who have multiple requirements in film editing and other subjects, I am accepting late papers through the internet.

FOR THOSE SUBMITTING THE REVIEW THROUGH EMAIL, TAKE NOTE:
Please submit your film reviews to my email jseliab[at]gmail.com and cc to psspdvo@addu.edu.ph. Do not submit document attachments, my email accounts have anti-virus softwares that delete attachments. Submit the reviews as text using "cut and paste" method, i.e. cut your text from MS Word and paste it in your mail as text. Do not forget to type your complete name and course/ year at the beginning of the mail.

Put in the subject heading of your email: HUM3 FILM REVIEW. This will enable my mail to filter your review into a specific folder so it gets spared from the smart "junk mail" filtering process. Emails without that subject heading may be deleted right away by Apple Mail if the your body text contains specific strings of words that Apple sees as junk. So please, be considerate enough to put that special heading.

All review sent by mail must be received before Wednesday, March 23, 2005. Reviews received beyond the deadline will have three (3) point deduction per day.

Friday, March 04, 2005

3 People Seduced by the Bloody Allure of the Ring

3 People Seduced by the Bloody Allure of the Ring
By A. O. SCOTT, New York Times
Published: December 15, 2004
View NY Times here.

Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is the best movie released by a major Hollywood studio this year, and not because it is the grandest, the most ambitious or even the most original. On the contrary: it is a quiet, intimately scaled three-person drama directed in a patient, easygoing style, without any of the displays of allusive cleverness or formal gimmickry that so often masquerade as important filmmaking these days.

At first glance the story, about a grizzled boxing trainer whose hard heart is melted by a spunky young fighter, seems about as fresh as a well-worn gym shoe. This is a Warner Brothers release, and if it were not in color (and if the young fighter in question were not female), "Million Dollar Baby," with its open-hearted mixture of sentiment and grit, might almost be mistaken for a picture from the studio's 1934 lineup that was somehow mislaid for 70 years.

Which is not to say that Mr. Eastwood, who is of Depression-era vintage himself (he will turn 75 next year), is interested in nostalgia, or in the self-conscious quotation of a bygone cinematic tradition, or even in simplicity for its own sake. With its careful, unassuming naturalism, its visual thrift and its emotional directness, "Million Dollar Baby" feels at once contemporary and classical, a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove.

Mr. Eastwood treats the conventions of the boxing-movie genre, its measured alternations of adversity and redemption, like the chord changes to a familiar song - the kind of standard that can, in the hands of a deft and sensitive musician, be made to yield fresh meanings and unexpected reservoirs of deep and difficult emotion.

Mr. Eastwood (who, speaking of music, also composed the film's gentle, unobtrusive score) plays Frankie Dunn, the owner of a tidy, beat-up gym tucked away in a shabby corner of Los Angeles. His best friend, who supplies world-weary voiceover narration to help the plot through its occasional thickets, is Eddie Dupris, (Morgan Freeman) a former fighter (nicknamed Scrap) whom Frankie managed long ago.

Both men carry some heavy frustration and regret - Frankie has lost a daughter, Scrap has lost an eye - but they bear the weight gracefully and with good-humored fatalism, reconciled to loneliness and the diminishing returns of age. Scrap spars with the young would-be tough guys who hang out in the gym and watches out for the slow-witted orphan who is both their mascot and their scapegoat. Frankie, meanwhile, reads Yeats, studies Gaelic and goes to Mass every day, mainly to annoy the prickly young priest with inane theological challenges. The banter between Scrap and Frankie - the way that Mr. Freeman's warmth and wit play against Mr. Eastwood's gruff reserve - is one of the movie's chief pleasures, and for long, satisfying spells Mr. Eastwood pushes aside the demands of storytelling to savor the comforts and abrasions of longtime friendship.

Frankie is the latest in a lengthening line of crusty old-timers Mr. Eastwood has played since he became eligible for AARP membership, joining the gunnery sergeant in "Heartbreak Ridge" and the retired astronaut from "Space Cowboys" (among many others) in an unequaled pantheon of leathery masculinity. Perhaps no American actor besides Gene Hackman (who joined Mr. Eastwood and Mr. Freeman in "Unforgiven") has ripened with such relish, becoming more fully and complicatedly himself as he grows older. As a director, Mr. Eastwood's innate toughness has mellowed into a sinewy grace, and as an actor his limitations have become a source of strength. When, late in "Million Dollar Baby," Frankie sheds tears, the moment brings a special pathos, not only because we're unaccustomed to seeing Mr. Eastwood cry, but also because we might have doubted that he had it in him.

Frankie, a gifted professional whose timidity - he prefers to think of it as common sense - has kept him away from the big time, receives a second chance in the unlikely person of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank, in her best performance since "Boys Don't Cry"), a waitress who shows up at his gym and won't take no for an answer. Frankie insists that he doesn't train girls, and since Maggie is already 30, she's too old to have much chance for glory in any case. But her combination of eagerness and discipline (and Scrap's quiet expertise at manipulating his buddy's few remaining heartstrings) wear down Frankie's resistance, and he and Maggie are soon embarked on a classic underdog's journey toward triumph.

Or so we are led to believe. Midway through the movie, after Frankie and Maggie have had a frustrating visit with her unpleasant family back home in Missouri, Mr. Eastwood ends a calm, relatively unimportant scene by fading to black - a subtle, simple and chilling harbinger of the greater darkness to come.

"Million Dollar Baby," written by Paul Haggis, is based on some of the stories in "Rope Burns," F. X. Toole's collection of lean and gamy pugilistic tales. There is a pulpy, Irish Catholic fatalism in Mr. Toole's work - and certainly in Mr. Eastwood's approach to it - that can also be found in Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River," the source for Mr. Eastwood's last movie. This picture is smaller and more concerned with the fates of individuals than with the workings of family and community, but if anything, the shadows of authentic tragedy fall more deeply over its hushed, intimate spaces.

Mr. Eastwood's universe is, as ever, a violent and unforgiving place, in which the only protections against nihilism are the professional regulation of brutality (in this case by the sweet science of boxing) and the mutual obligations of friendship. Mr. Eastwood is unusual among American filmmakers not only for his pessimism, but also for his disinclination to use romantic love as either a dramatic motive or as a source of easy comfort. The question of sex never arises between Frankie and Maggie, and while there is abundant love in "Million Dollar Baby," it is entirely paternal, filial and brotherly. It is also severely tested by circumstances and proves to be at once a meager and a necessary compensation for the cruel operations of fate.

I apologize for this flight into abstraction. It is, for one thing, the only way to avoid giving away the devastating surprises that give "Million Dollar Baby" its overwhelming power. But such lofty language is also a way of suggesting the nature of that power, and the unexpected largeness of this intimate, casually told story. The film rarely shifts its gaze from its three main characters, who glow with a fierce individuality and whose ways of speaking unlock the poetry that still lives in the plain American vernacular.

It seems fortuitous that Frankie is an admirer of William Butler Yeats, who in his later years developed a style of unadorned, disillusioned eloquence and produced some of his greatest poems: lyrics that are simple, forceful and not afraid of risking cliché. Late in the film, in his darkest hour, Frankie reads from "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," the younger Yeats's pastoral dream of flight and transformation, a choice that makes sense in context. Mr. Eastwood himself, though, is closer to the sensibility of a late poem like "The Circus Animals' Desertion," whose famous image of "the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart" might describe Frankie's gym. Or there is this stanza, from one of Yeats's "Last Poems," called "The Apparitions," which seems to me to capture the paradoxical spirit, at once generous and mournful, of this old master, Mr. Eastwood, and his new masterpiece:

When a man grows old his joy

Grows more deep day after day,

His empty heart is full at length

But he has need of all that strength

Because of the increasing Night

That opens her mystery and fright.

"Million Dollar Baby" is rated PG-13. It has some brutal fight scenes and some salty gym-rat language.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

A Review: Dreamers

By Phil Villarreal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR



Ah, 1968 Paris. Anyone who was there can tell you it was a time and place rife with passion, cultural upheaval, and hordes of incestuous twins roaming the streets.

Bernardo Bertolucci's sensual, beautiful film "The Dreamers" places us in the tiptoeing shoes of Matthew (Michael Pitt), an American student studying in Paris, where, sure enough, he meets and moves in with a pair of those notorious incestuous twins, Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green).

OK, so maybe Bertolucci is the only guy who remembers the incestuous twins. Or maybe no such twins existed, or maybe there were a few pairs, but they might not have been keen on taking wandering American students into their households.

The most logical explanation of the bizarre premise: Bertolucci, an inarguably brilliant Oscar-winning filmmaker, is also quite the perv. The director who shocked audiences with the X-rated "Last Tango in Paris" in 1972 is still at least as daring and willing to explore bizarre sex on-screen.

Hence, the bedroom gymnastics of "The Dreamers." Theo and Isabelle sleep naked together; Theo loses a bet, and Isabelle forces him to pleasure himself in front of her and Matthew; and Theo holds Matthew down so Isabelle can have her way with the outsider.

Bertolucci may be a wild child, but he's also an artist with dogged integrity, and his brainy film reflects that. He refused to conform "The Dreamers" to R-rated standards. It's the first major studio release with an NC-17 rating since 1997.

Because the director held strong at the expense of the movie's potential monetary gross, we get to soak in the filmmaker's untainted vision. And a gorgeous, guiltily voyeuristic vision it is.

The three principal characters, all acted with devoted charisma, are filled with utopian ideas and are devoted lovers of film. Blessed with endless free time, they spend their evenings in the front row of the cinemathéque and their nights arguing over bottles of wine about the artistic merits of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

At any given moment, one of the three will start to flail around and gesture wildly, imitating a favorite moment from Jean-Luc Godard or Howard Hawks. As the characters act, Bertolucci intercuts scenes from the referenced films.

Matthew plays along and accepts the twins' creepiness, if only to get closer to Isabelle, with whom he fell immediately in love. On a dare, Matthew runs with the twins through the Louvre. He's rewarded by the twins chanting, "We accept you. One of us!" emulating the characters in "Freaks" (1932). Isabelle and Theo are definitely that.

There's a constant sexual interplay reverberating around the three, adding tension and urgency to their conversations. Gradually, the characters are closed off from the outside world, even as protesters take to the streets to fight for ideals they profess to advocate. The characters are so obsessed with one another, they won't even step out and fight for their beloved cinemathéque, which has been shut down by officials.

At first Matthew, as well as Bertolucci, seem to admire the cinematic and sexual cocoon, but as we go on, it becomes more obvious that Matthew, Isabelle and Theo use movies and sex as pathetic shields to protect them from reality.

It's impossible to grow and mature in such a tiny, hermetically sealed space, and it's inevitable that those who stay will suffocate on one another's dreams.

Monday, January 31, 2005

First Grading Grades

First grading grades are available at the Admissions Office. You can
either call via landline (2212411 local 8302) or email me at jseliab@gmail.com. I can send your grades via email.

Bong Eliab


Office of Faculty Development and Scholarship Programs
Ateneo de Davao University
E. Jacinto St., 8016 Davao City
Tel. No. +63 (82) 221.2411 local 8303/ 8302
Fax +63 (82) 226.4116
facdev@addu.edu.ph
www.addu.edu.ph

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Raunchy, oui, oui

Friday, Jan 28, 2005
YO! Features



Raunchy, oui, oui

Older woman pitted against young girl in erotic French tale
By GARY THOMPSON
thompsg@phillynews.com

Though Hollywood movies are reputed to be depraved and lurid, they're generally pretty square.

Reformers have taken over, and lately it's been a very PG kind of town. Where sex is concerned, it's almost prim. Hollywood's current idea of a "sexy" movie is "Charlie's Angels 2," where the most risque scenes are of swimsuit modeling.

If you want the harder stuff, you have to go behind the counter, to France and French movies, which are often completely lurid (several have featured porn stars in key roles) or, in the case of "Swimming Pool," genuinely erotic.

The movie is technically an English-language picture, but it's written and directed by Frenchman Francois Ozon ("Under the Sand"), and it has a Frenchman's laissez-faire attitude toward actresses keeping their clothes on.

The suspenseful "Swimming Pool" is basically a titanic catfight between an uptight Englishwoman (Charlotte Rampling) who senses she's losing her sex appeal and a randy French girl (Ludivine Sagnier) who's freely exercising hers.

They square off at a French country home where the Englishwoman, a mystery writer, has gone to work on her next book. The home is the property of her publisher (Charles Dance), with whom she's involved, though lately he's shown signs of being bored.

She goes to his home in France hoping he'll show up, but he doesn't. Instead, the man's estranged daughter arrives, and she's a terror. She drinks, smokes, trashes the house and brings home a different guy every night for noisy ravishing.

She is constantly topless, often bottomless, and looks like Anna Kournikova, which I observed because I'm a trained observer.

Because these are women in a Frenchman's movie, they do not become fast friends, as they would in an American movie. They become enemies, competitors, rivals. Their talons extend, their eyes narrow, and they curse each other.

Slut! Prude! Fur flies, and the women decide to test themselves by competing for the attention of a handsome waiter, a sort of Gallic Marlboro Man. For Rampling's character, the issue isn't the man, it's her self-image: She's jealous of the younger woman's sexual power and wants to gauge her own.

The stakes are high, and it's not long before there is a murder and a cover-up.

"Swimming Pool" comes by its "erotic thriller" label honestly, not merely because the women are naked, but because they deploy their sexuality in a way that's crucial to the narrative - the catalyst for it, the point of it, in a way.

Given all of that, I wish the ending of "Swimming Pool" didn't suck so much, and suck in a way that defies description, since to do so would give too much away.

In general, we can say the ending is ironic, since the movie turns out to be at its best before all is laid bare.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

La Vita E Bella

Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita E Bella) is a daring departure for one of the world’s most acclaimed comic filmmakers. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, the Best Jewish Experience Award at this year’s Jerusalem International Film Festival and the Audience Award at both the Toronto International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. In addition, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL is the recipient of 8 David di Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars) including Best Picture. Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay along with Vincenzo Cerami, the film is a Chaplinesque fable about the power of imagination set against the stark reality of World War II Europe. LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (La Vita Bella) combines satire, physical comedy, social commentary and a touch of the surreal into a uniquely moving story of love.

At the center of the fable is Guido (Roberto Benigni) — an enchanting individual with childlike innocence and grand dreams of owning his own bookshop. It’s 1939 and he has come to the Tuscan town of Arezzo with his poet friend Ferruccio (Sergio Bustric). With unabashed humor and joy, the two seek fortune and romance, ignoring the growing anti-Semitism and Fascist government that surrounds them.

Guido falls in love with Dora, a beautiful young school teacher (Nicoletta Braschi, the Italian actress who has starred in most of Benigni’s films). Unfortunately, the woman he calls his “Princess” is already engaged. Worse, she is engaged to the local Fascist official with whom he has had a run-in. Guido, however, is not deterred and a fairy tale romance ensues.

Several years later — Guido and Dora are married and have a son, Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini), and Guido has finally opened the bookshop of his dreams. But now, the occasional bigotries Guido once ignored have become Racial Laws with which he must come to terms. Throughout it all, Guido determines to shield his son from the brutal reality governing their lives. This determination becomes a matter of life and death when Guido and his son are sent to a concentration came three months before the war’s end. Of her own accord, and out of her love for them, Dora deports herself on the same train.

Now, in this unimaginable world, Guido must use his bold imagination and every ounce of his indefatigable spirit to save those he loves.

Read more....

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Sex and Lucia: An Introduction

Alluring love story is battlefield; senses are pitted against intellect

Marta Barber
Miami Herald
Published: Friday, August 9, 2002



Julio Medem's Lucía y el sexo (Sex and Lucia) is a battle between the senses and the intellect, with the soul clearly the winner. The film involves a romantic set of encounters, sometimes tender, sometimes overtly raw, in which the only thing left to the imagination is what happens above the neck. The film is a love story that begins well, takes a tortuous detour and ends, as the king in The King and I would say, a puzzlement.

There are two stories: One is about Lucía, a thoroughly modern woman unafraid to go after what she wants. But when things go wrong, she feels the need to escape. The other is about sex: explicit, sometimes gratuitous, though nothing to alarm an adult audience. (Medem refused to tone down the sex scenes for distribution in the United States.)

Unlike Y Tu Mamá También and Intimacy , two recent films in which sex was an integral part, Sex and Lucía is not about unleashing repressed desires. Sexuality doesn't inhibit these characters. The sensual scenes may jolt your libido, but in the end it's the story that kindles reaction even as it defies easy explanation.

Lucía (Paz Vega) is a waitress who is having no success in lifting her live-in writer boyfriend, Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa), from a deep depression. When she gets home one night after work and realizes that Lorenzo is not home, Lucía fears the worst. A telephone call from a policeman with ''bad news'' makes Lucía assume he is dead.

Flashback six years, when Lucía approaches Lorenzo at a bar and tells him she's secretly in love with him but not that she's been stalking him. They begin living together. She works at the restaurant and he struggles to finish a novel. Everything seems fine, until one day Lorenzo's friend Carlos tells him about a woman named Elena who has a child. The girl was conceived during a one-night fling Elena had with a stranger in a secluded beach in an unnamed Mediterranean island. The details match the seductive opening scenes of the film, and Lorenzo realizes he is the father.

It is here that the focus turns from Lucía to Lorenzo, who becomes so central to the plot that the film could easily have been titled Sex and Lorenzo . As he watches the girl play at her day-care center, Lorenzo is smitten by Belén, the baby sitter. They arrange for an encounter at Elena's home.

But something terrible happens that sends Lorenzo into an emotional hole. This ties in snugly with the beginning of the film, but by then the story has shifted and is ready to take on a new dimension with Medem shuffling between reality and fiction.

Are all the events really happening or are they part of Lorenzo's novel? Is the book a product of his imagination or is Lorenzo fictionalizing reality? Even when you think you're ahead of Medem's game, something throws you back.

As the film begins its final stretch, Lucía escapes to that Mediterranean island on which she hopes to uncover the mystery of what drove Lorenzo away. Unknown to her, Elena lives on the island.

Some of the island scenes are shot in overexposed, high-definition digital video, giving the beach shots a luminous and surreal background. The island is so important to this part of the story that the film could also have been called Sex and the Island. Sex and Lucía was well-received at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals and won two Goyas, Spain's equivalent of the Oscars, including the best actress award for Vega as Lucía.

As he did in his 1998 Lovers in the Arctic Circle , Medem plays with beginnings and ends, intending to play with the minds of the audience. Yet you cannot avoid being swept in his game. Medem may have disrobed most of the cast, leaving their bodies exposed, but the plot remains as guarded as a virgin with a chastity belt. That's why Sex and Lucía is so alluring.

Movie review, 'Sex and Lucia'
By Michael Wilmington

"Sex and Lucia" is one of the sexiest movies out this year to date. It's a hallucinatory tale about a seemingly tragic love affair that detours through the world of imagination and memory. The result: a blissful island idyll, seething with eroticism and gorgeous visions of sun and sea.

"Sex" is set in modern Madrid and on the Mediterranean isle of Formentera, but it also takes place in the present and the past, in real life and within the imaginary confines of a novel. And Spanish writer-director Julio Medem packs it with so much stunning, wildly colorful imagery -- and so much sex -- that it transfixes you even when you're not quite sure what's going on. (For some audiences, that may be often.)


Instead, Medem, the vibrant young director of "Terra" and "Cows," whirls you from one time and place to another with swiftness and ease while his uninhibited cast members (including star Paz Vega, whose performance here earned her the Goya -- the Spanish Oscar -- for Best Actress) keep stripping themselves bare, emotionally and sexually. Vega plays Lucia, first shown intertwined, underwater, with her lover, Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa), and then in the blackness of the Madrid night as she receives a last desperate phone call from Lorenzo. Later, she's informed by the police of his death by accident.

Distraught, she travels to Formentera and almost immediately tumbles down a huge hole that opens into another world. In this world of reverie, we see -- mixed together, with little regard for chronology or classical narration -- Lucia's meeting with Lorenzo, the raffishly appealing writer she's adored from afar; Lorenzo's liaison with another woman, Elena (Najwa Nimri of Medem's "Lovers of the Arctic Circle"); and the birth of Lorenzo's and Elena's daughter, Luna (Silvia Llanos). Then we plunge into a visualization of the novel Lorenzo is writing while he's with Lucia, a tale that may or may not be a true record of his high jinks with the adolescent Belen (Elena Anaya). Belen lives in a sexually complicated household, and she also baby-sits for Luna, Lorenzo's daughter.

A tragedy erupts in this story as well, a darkness that alternates with the blazing sunlight and sensuality of Formentera's beaches, where Lucia meets Elena, as well as a man, Carlos (Daniel Freire), who seems to be the double of the mother's lover in Lorenzo's novel.

Does it all sound confusing? It is. But what's important in "Sex" is less verisimilitude -- the story is full of outrageous coincidences -- than the scintillating visuals and conflicts and the sultry mood. Like "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and the recent flood of French eroticism ("The Piano Teacher," "Fat Girl," "Pola X"), "Sex and Lucia" uses the screen's current sexual openness with intimacy and abandon. The sex is frequent, but it's completely integrated into the story, which is, after all, about sexual obsession and betrayals.

Spanish cinema has often revealed a flair for bizarre melodrama; the country's greatest director (even though he was an exile who mostly worked in Mexico and France) was Luis Bunuel. Medem's film is in the Bunuel tradition; he's defiantly sexy and radical. But Medem also goes in for the flashy, ravishing visuals Bunuel usually eschewed. (Here, they're shot by the splendid cinematographer Kiko de la Rica.) The movie is a journey into a land of wonders beneath the surface of consciousness,-- but it's also a sexual ride of unabated heat. You may be confused by "Sex and Lucia," but you won't be unmoved.

3 stars (out of 4)
"Sex and Lucia"
Directed and written by Julio Medem; photographed by Kiko de la Rica; edited by Ivan Aledo; art direction by Montserrat Sanz; music by Alberto Iglesias; produced by Fernando Bovaira. A Palm Pictures release; opens Friday at the Century Center Cinema. In Spanish; English subtitled. Running time: 2:09. No MPAA rating (adult: sensuality, nudity, language, violence).
Lucia -- Paz Vega
Lorenzo -- Tristan Ulloa
Elena -- Najwa Nimri
Carlow/Antonio -- Daniel Friere
Belen -- Elena Anaya Luna -- Silvia Llanos

Michael Wilmington is the Chicago Tribune Movie Critic.

Synopsis: Lucia y Sexo

SYNOPSIS: SEX AND LUCIA



Lucía is a young waitress in Madrid. After the loss of her long-time boyfriend, a writer, she seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island. There, bathed in an atmosphere of fresh air, dazzling sun, and glistening deep blue water, Lucía begins to discover the dark corners of her past relationship. It is as if she is reading forbidden passages of a novel, which the author only now, from afar, allows her to read.

From acclaimed writer/director Julio Medem (LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE), SEX AND LUCÍA is a visually stunning and thematically adventurous look at passion, elusive relationships and deep bonds between people who thought they were strangers. SEX AND LUCÍA stars Paz Vega (TALK TO HER), in her Goya Award winning performance as Lucía, Tristán Ulloa (OPEN YOUR EYES) as Lorenzo, Najwa Nimri (LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE) as Elena, Daniel Freire (ADVENTURES OF GOD) as Carlos, and Elena Anaya (WHERE THE WORLD ENDS) as Belén. The film's haunting score by Alberto Iglesias (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) also garnered a Goya Award.

SEX AND LUCÍA played to critical acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and Rotterdam Film Festival, following up a successful run in its native Spain where it was a huge hit. Produced by Sogecine, it is being distributed in the United States by Palm Pictures.

BACKGROUND

After directing LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, Julio Medem wanted to present a less downbeat approach to human relationships. He set out to write SEX AND LUCÍA for Najwa Nimri, who plays Elena in the film. Nimri starred as Ana in LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, and Medem wanted to give her a less tragic end than the one she had in that acclaimed film. He also wanted to work with his girlfriend, Montse Sanz, who is the art director on SEX AND LUCÍA and is responsible for the film's evocative and luminous look. Medem would later go on to dedicate the film to Sanz.

Medem began writing the story after inspiration hit during a vacation on the tiny island of Formentera, a trip he made prior to directing LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. When he arrived to the little-known island off the coast of Spain, he immediately knew he found the setting for his next film. The story began with the development of the character Lucía and the beautiful island she escapes to. Simultaneously he began developing a novel entitled EL SEXO, which he later turned into a separate script. Medem then set about joining the two scripts. One year and eight drafts later, SEX AND LUCÍA was born.

The character of Lucía demanded Medem find an actress that could convey vulnerability and combine it with sex appeal, a difficult combination to portray. When asked about the character of Lucía, and finding the actress that had the ability to play her, Medem said, "You could maybe say she is a 'healthy' girl, someone with a clear line, and that's when I found Paz Vega, who I think is wonderful."

A trademark of Medem as a filmmaker is the long rehearsal period that he insists on before filming begins. All of his films start with his original stories that grow out of his experience and his imagination. To better convey the feel of each script he believes the intense rehearsal period brings the actors closer to his words, and helps him transfer the character from the page to the actor. Says Medem of this exhaustive but integral part of the process, "During the rehearsals, I try to get to the center of the character with the actor, and once I feel we have captured the character, i get out and look at it from the outside. It's a very intense process during which things start to change."

This almost organic approach to the script shows in the depth of the characters, the daring, sexy, and evocative unfolding of relationships, and in the love story whose past and future enhances the present. SEX AND LUCÍA is a luminous film, a haunting journey, and an extremely involving love story.

The Director: Julio Medem

Born in Donosti, San Sebastian, Julio Medem is one of Spain's most recognized and honored directors. Medem has received critical acclaim and many awards, with his films having competed in festivals around the world, including Cannes, Venice, Tokyo, and Sundance.

SEX AND LUCIA, in addition to being an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, was honored with 12 Goya nominations and went on to win 2 Goyas: Best New Actress for Paz Vega and Best Music for Alberto Iglesias.

Medem's last film, LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE garnered tremendous international attention at festivals from Venice to Karlovy Vary to Valladolid to Sundance, and won 2 Goya Awards, for Best Editing and Best Music. His 1996 film, TIERRA (EARTH) was an official selection at Cannes and in addition to 2 Goya Awards, also won the Best Spanish Film of the Year at the Valladolid Film Festival.

This award-winning career was foreseen with Medem's first film, VACAS (COWS), which garnered the Goya for Best New Director; won the BFI's Sutherland Trophy for "The Most Original and Imaginative First Film Shown in Great Britain;" the Best Film at the Turin Film Festival; and the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival. LA ARDILLA ROJA (THE RED SQUIRREL) continued this pattern with the Audience Award for Best Foreign Film at the Cannes Film Festival; the Special Jury Award and Critics Award at the Gerander Fantastic Film Festival; the Golden Palm Award for Outstanding Independent Film at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival; Film Creation of the Year at the Luis Bunuel Awards; and Film Revelation of the Year by Positif Magazine in France. The film also garnered Medem a Special Award for Direction at the Denver International Film Festival.