Film Reviews

Sex and Lucia

• Rating:
• Director: Julian Medem.
• Starring: Elena Anaya, Javier Camara, Daniel Freyre, Silvia Llanos, Najwa Nimri, Tristan Ulloa, Paz Vega.
• Details: Spa / 128 mins / (No Cert).

An explicit but involving drama from the director of 'Lovers of the Artic Circle', 'Sex and Lucia' follows the title character, a Madrid based waitress. One evening she returns home to the apartment she shares with her writer boyfriend, Lorenzo (Ulloa) and finds him missing. Believing him to be dead, she heads off to the island of Formentera, which he wrote at length about. From here, the narrative then shifts back some six years and focuses on how the relationship developed, as well as giving an insight into the nature of Lorenzo's character. Like his fellow countryman, Alejandro Amenebar, Julian Medem likes to play around with the accepted conventions of a movie's narrative. In 'Sex and Lucia', he routinely shifts the focus of the film from character to character and time to time, which ensures that the film's subject matter doesn't go stale. However, it also leads to some complications and 'Sex and Lucia' is occasionally a difficult movie to follow and one where plot holes are at a premium. That said, in terms of visuals and atmosphere, it's gorgeous stuff, as Medem uses a wide range of striking images with imaginative camera work to evoke a sense of time and place

Review by Garreth Murphy