SEX AND LUCIA 1/2]
Sexy but pretentious melodrama. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 129 minutes. Not rated (full frontal male and female nudity, language, sexuality). At the Sunshine Cinema.
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IF you’re starved for on-screen nudity and sex garnished with art-film trappings, then Julio Medem’s “Sex and Lucia” has just what it takes to satisfy your cravings.
The price you’ll pay is putting up with the director’s relentless Euro-pretension, manifested in a tediously contrived plot crammed with absurd coincidences, clunky symbolism and soap-operatic melodrama.
“Sex and Lucia” is one of those films about storytelling whose author seems too enamored of his own cleverness to tell a story that achieves any life of its own.
Still, when he stops playing tiresome postmodern games with narrative, the film achieves some genuinely moving and enjoyably sexy moments. He also makes the most of his spectacular locations on the island of Formentara (the film is deftly shot on high definition digital video).
At times “Lucia” feels like a Spanish “9½ Weeks” replete with blindfolds and fruit – except that in accordance with the European art house trend, it shows the male sexual organ in various stages of arousal.
As in so much middlebrow art-porn, the actresses are a lot better looking than the male stars, and the film pretends to be about a woman when it’s really about a man.
Lucia (Paz Vega) is an attractive, often braless Madrid waitress who flees to a sun-bleached Mediterranean island after the apparent death of her depressed live-in boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa), an author of autobiographical novels.
In flashback you discover that it was on this island that Lorenzo once had a spectacular one-night stand with vacationing chef Elena (Najwa Nimri) – which, unbeknownst to Lucia, led to the birth of a daughter.
That same Elena is now Lucia’s landlady on the island – and all that Lucia knows is that Elena fled Madrid after a terrible tragedy and is now living with a handsome, well-endowed scuba diver who may or may not be a murderer (you never find out).
It seems that Lorenzo had discovered his daughter’s existence – and secretly began hanging out with her and her gorgeous nanny Belen (Elena Anaya) on the playground.
Unfortunately, the narrative is convoluted as well as circular, and you’re never quite sure if what you’re seeing is part of the storyline or merely a scene from Lorenzo’s novel.