Eliseo Subiela has that rare quality of seeing magic in reality, and portraying it in his movies with freshness and philosophical depth. His characters, despite being normal, live in a sort of limbo reality, and their interaction with our world is always eccentric and quirky. Subiela is true to himself in the premise of the movie, as it departs from a quote from an Andre Breton's poem that intrinsically links live, love and death and considers physical love as a redemptive element in life.
The movie revolves about the sexual awakening of Eloy, a sweet and absent-minded teenager, apprentice of electrician and courier boy to the nearby cemetery, who starts sleepwalking after the death of his father and ends in the arms of a sassy and older neighbour, Elvira, who will teach him how to satisfy a woman, and himself, in bed.
If you want to make a movie about tantric sex and erotic initiation you need two basic elements. Firstly, a couple of sensual actors who have chemistry on camera and are able to transmit eroticism to the spectator, so that we can believe that they are having sex and enjoying it. Secondly, to create the right atmosphere and mood so the sex scenes look natural and passionate. All of that was missing from the movie, despite sex being the main subject of the movie. The scenes look unnatural, forced, like a rehearsal. They are shot with constriction, without passion and with some visual bigotry, despite the intention of the movie being quite the opposite. It felt like those modern Kamasutra books with photos of nude couples posing in different positions - Boring and not erotic. It would have been better, perhaps, showing less, and leaving more to the imagination, which always gives great results.
The most memorable moments of the movie are, however, those few in which the movie distracts itself from Eros and portrays reality through Eloy's eyes and tells part of his family's story. The happy eeriness of Eloy's trips to the cemetery on his bike to deliver tablets are wonderfully photographed and shot, the natural interaction between the deceased and those alive are those more closely connected to Breton's initial poem and Subiela's style. Here we see the always charming Subiela in action, focusing on what he does best.
Regarding the acting, I found Leandro Stivelman good and believable in his portray of the sweet and dreamy Eloy, and also Hugo Arana in his short role as Eloy's deceased father. I did not find Antonella Costa believable at all in her portray of Elvira, neither in the erotic scenes or in the talking ones. Perhaps because the script does not give much information about her, and the viewer does not now or understands her; on the other hand, she does not have the sensuality or acting maturity necessaries to affront a role like this. The rest of the actors are Ok in their respective roles.
Glimpses of the best Subiela are wasted by a rather mediocre and un-erotic erotic movie with a very weak script.
Room in Rome is the story of a short-lived physical and emotional liaison between two women in a hotel room in Rome in the last night of summer. It will be a night of intense discovery, a tour de force between two ways of seeing life, love and sex.
The story is inspired in the Chilean movie "En la Cama", which, at its turn, was based on the American film "Before the Sunrise". However, the setting and dialogues have been reworked and reinvented by Medem, as the story happens in Rome and the couple has the same gender.
Julio's Medem's well known mastery and filming sensibility are seen everywhere in this movie. The use of the lighting and framing of the images are precious, elegant, warm and welcoming, very artistically composed with a great use of chiaroscuro and decoration. The room, which is the main set in which the movie happens, is not overwhelmingly present or a close asphyxiating place, but a very open fluid ethereal container where the story happens. Medem positions and moves the camera so the viewer feels is in the room, not watching the room. The spacial perspective is, therefore, very different. This is necessary as otherwise the movie would have felt oppressive and theatrical not a real and cinematic.
There is something magic about the way Medem has used the paintings in the room as well as the decoration of the ceilings, the three spaces of the room (dormitory, bathroom and balcony) and the decorative elements in it, not only to offer different facets of the personality of the characters, or show different phases in their relationship, but to incorporate those little visual elements into the story, like the little angels on the ceiling, the Venus on the bedside table, etc. This is very Medem, who always uses the surroundings as part of the story not as a mere decorative item. This movie reminded me of Medem's Chaotic Anna, in the way he incorporates art into life, and gives art a meaning that is never decorative or purely aesthetic.
The movie could have been claustrophobic and theatrical, but it is not. The story, despite happening in the room, goes well beyond the room through the conversations of the characters and their use of the Internet to show pieces of their present and respective identities.
Medem also shows a wonderful direction of the actors, which is reduced to the two leading actresses and four very secondary roles. The bed scenes are very erotic, definitely hot, still tastefully filmed.
The two main actress are great in their role, especially Elena Anaya as the honest and emotionally fragile Spaniard lesbian Alba. She believes her role (she is a recent out-the-closet lesbian herself), and gives all what she has, showing a great acting registry from comedy to tragedy, from sweetness to cockiness. Natasha Yarovenko is not as good, but still believable as the mysterious athletic sincere and strong hetero Russian beauty Natasha, shocked by her own attraction towards Alba. There seems to be certain intimacy between the camera and the actresses, an understanding and acceptance that makes the story believable. Moreover, the two actress have a great chemistry on camera and, something extremely important in a movie like this.
The main problem, to me, with the movie is going over the top in the drawing of the characters, so they seem somewhat removed from the viewer, not always believable. 1/ Do the characters need to have perfect bodies for the story be more believable? I mean, the two actresses have wow bodies, especially Yarovenko, so you feel that it is pure logic that they felt attracted to each other. What about having the same story with two actresses that feel attracted to each other but look more normal and less gorgeous? Said in other words, characters for which the physic attraction is not that so obvious, still equally strong. Otherwise, you are stereotyping lesbians and bi-curious as gorgeous girls only attracted to super-duder gals. 2/ Do the characters need to have such a high professional profile to be more interesting? I don't think so. A normal person can have a great story to tell, immense depth in her soul, be very hot and attractive, and still be an office worker, for example. Finally, despite he music being very beautify, it is also very repetitive and you end resenting it.
To be honest, when I heard that Medem wanted to film a movie like this, I thought that it was just out of character. But, after watching it, I think he has adopted the story and made it completely his. A story that I thought would not interest me at all, and, on the contrary, I enjoyed immensely.
