I can't remember seeing many movies that were more beautifully shot than this one. It doesn't hit you over the head like one of David Lean's colossal spectacular stupendous architectiptoptoloftical magnificences but it is quietly effective. Faded when it needs to be, dark and moody when required. It's not just the pretty setting. The interiors are as well done as the undulating sea grass. And the performances are equally accomplished.
The plot, though. Well -- the plot. It's as if the people behind the movie had gorged themselves on Finnegans Wake and Borges to the point of bursting and then had sat down and storyboarded the whole movie on a major binge. (And I thought only the French could outfox me.)
There are some notions -- I hesitate to call them "themes" -- that run through the movie. There is the sea, of course, and the island, and the moon ("Luna"), and sex, telling stories, and conception and birth, and reproduction. I'm being kind of loose with some of those definitions so that "reproduction", for instance, includes writing novels, as does "telling stories" to children.
I'm on kind of shaky ground with most of those ideas so let's stick to sex, which I more or less understand. There's all sorts of hetero- and autosexual stuff in it, maybe even a hint of bestiality, but you get used to it. I went through the Human Sexuality Training Program at Berkeley along with a couple of hundred other professional types, many of them elderly ladies. The first thing the organizers did was have everyone sit down in an amphitheater and watch one full hour of pornographic movies, homosexuals at work, old folks, elephants. Satiated, the participants were no longer shockable and were ready to deal frankly with sex. This movie has a similar effect. One erect penis may be worth a gasp but by the time the second rolls around you're wondering what it has to do with the plot.
And, I'm sorry but I still can't get over the plot. This guy Lorenzo is evidently trying to write a novel, see, and this girl, Paz Vega, a total stranger, approaches him in a bar and suggests they live together. And at the end they ARE living happily together. It's everything in between that stumps me.
I could ask a dozen questions about the plot but will just give one example. What happened to the little girl, Luna? I could make as good a guess as anyone else but it would still be just that, a guess. Anyway, I won't list them all because you'll be asking yourselves the same questions after you see this film.
Not that I want to bash it. As I said, the actors are uniformly good. I especially liked the novelist, Lorenzo, who has a face that is sympatico without being the least bit handsome. And it's a movie for grownups, which nowadays is a novelty. There isn't the slightest nod to raw adolescent sensibilities. Phrases pop up from time to time that raise those little flags you see when you've marked an email message in your inbox as worthy of more attention. "A lighthouse without a keeper."
The plot may be a lot more murky than the Mediterranean Sea in this film but I sat through it all with interest, waiting to see how or if they could pull it all together.
The plot, though. Well -- the plot. It's as if the people behind the movie had gorged themselves on Finnegans Wake and Borges to the point of bursting and then had sat down and storyboarded the whole movie on a major binge. (And I thought only the French could outfox me.)
There are some notions -- I hesitate to call them "themes" -- that run through the movie. There is the sea, of course, and the island, and the moon ("Luna"), and sex, telling stories, and conception and birth, and reproduction. I'm being kind of loose with some of those definitions so that "reproduction", for instance, includes writing novels, as does "telling stories" to children.
I'm on kind of shaky ground with most of those ideas so let's stick to sex, which I more or less understand. There's all sorts of hetero- and autosexual stuff in it, maybe even a hint of bestiality, but you get used to it. I went through the Human Sexuality Training Program at Berkeley along with a couple of hundred other professional types, many of them elderly ladies. The first thing the organizers did was have everyone sit down in an amphitheater and watch one full hour of pornographic movies, homosexuals at work, old folks, elephants. Satiated, the participants were no longer shockable and were ready to deal frankly with sex. This movie has a similar effect. One erect penis may be worth a gasp but by the time the second rolls around you're wondering what it has to do with the plot.
And, I'm sorry but I still can't get over the plot. This guy Lorenzo is evidently trying to write a novel, see, and this girl, Paz Vega, a total stranger, approaches him in a bar and suggests they live together. And at the end they ARE living happily together. It's everything in between that stumps me.
I could ask a dozen questions about the plot but will just give one example. What happened to the little girl, Luna? I could make as good a guess as anyone else but it would still be just that, a guess. Anyway, I won't list them all because you'll be asking yourselves the same questions after you see this film.
Not that I want to bash it. As I said, the actors are uniformly good. I especially liked the novelist, Lorenzo, who has a face that is sympatico without being the least bit handsome. And it's a movie for grownups, which nowadays is a novelty. There isn't the slightest nod to raw adolescent sensibilities. Phrases pop up from time to time that raise those little flags you see when you've marked an email message in your inbox as worthy of more attention. "A lighthouse without a keeper."
The plot may be a lot more murky than the Mediterranean Sea in this film but I sat through it all with interest, waiting to see how or if they could pull it all together.