What is sex and Lucia all about? This isn't as clear from the title as it would seem and after churning it over nothing gets any clearer. Sex does appear, quite frequently, and links many of the characters together but the film isn't all about sex. In fact sex is unembarrassing, pleasurable and regret free and although it appears often it seems simply to be presented as a fact of life.
Unfortunately everything else seems to be part of a dizzying metaphor in a cyclical plot. Unless deconstructing convoluted narratives is your thing this can be a problem. Lucia is a waitress who follows and seduces Lorenzo an author who writes books about passionate encounters and into cycle we go. Couplings, fantasies and melodramas unfold, events mirror each other, and the timeline twists and turns on itself and in the end (it all gets very metaphysical) I think Medem tries to tell us that imagination makes reality what we will. What's real and what is invention becomes irrevocably blurred (is this the point?). The symbolism becomes heavy handed, even the holiday island that the characters revolve around itself is almost not an island, criss-crossed by subterranean sea caves where one can enter at one point and emerge at another and fantastically rocks in stormy weather.
Despite the maturity and tenderness with which the love scenes are treated, the heavy handed symbolism and contortionist plot work to throw off any emotional intensity that the acting and powerful soundtrack can build. It ends up being too clever to exercise any real intelligence.
Unfortunately everything else seems to be part of a dizzying metaphor in a cyclical plot. Unless deconstructing convoluted narratives is your thing this can be a problem. Lucia is a waitress who follows and seduces Lorenzo an author who writes books about passionate encounters and into cycle we go. Couplings, fantasies and melodramas unfold, events mirror each other, and the timeline twists and turns on itself and in the end (it all gets very metaphysical) I think Medem tries to tell us that imagination makes reality what we will. What's real and what is invention becomes irrevocably blurred (is this the point?). The symbolism becomes heavy handed, even the holiday island that the characters revolve around itself is almost not an island, criss-crossed by subterranean sea caves where one can enter at one point and emerge at another and fantastically rocks in stormy weather.
Despite the maturity and tenderness with which the love scenes are treated, the heavy handed symbolism and contortionist plot work to throw off any emotional intensity that the acting and powerful soundtrack can build. It ends up being too clever to exercise any real intelligence.