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El Sexo De Los Ángeles - 2012



Whilst exploring online for some new European movies to watch, I quite chanced on El Sexo De Los Ángeles. The poster seemed rather enticingly old school and therefore I followed the link to IMDB. As I hadn’t seen many films in this genre other than Drei by Tom Tykwer, I decided at once that this movie merited an addition into my collection more so because the topic of my current book was experimental sexuality given that the world was fertile enough to accept such concepts without much storm.



El Sexo De Los Ángeles begins with a man Bruno (Llorenç González) from Barcelona watching a dance performance on the street. Soon after the show somebody tries to pickpocket him. He tumbles in the hustle and injures his forehead badly. One of the dancers, Rai (Álvaro Cervantes) also a karate instructor, rescues him and helps him clean up his wound at the place he is staying. We then learn that Bruno has a photographer girlfriend Carla (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) whom he is ardently in love with and discloses as he and Rai get chatting that her folks do not think much of him and would prefer someone in the nature of an architect or the likes for their daughter.



One observes that Rai is quite smitten by Bruno. Bruno too senses a certain attraction to Rai although he rebuffs his overtures openly. From here the director Xavier Villaverde builds up the yarn to a comfortable degree where Bruno begins to internalise the conflict about why he is feeling the way he is feeling and wantonly allows Rai to kiss him after the party, and then in a natural progression submits to the direct invitation at the apartment of Carla’s colleagues when he lands up to return Rai’s tee that he had worn when they had first met.

El Sexo De Los Ángeles is based on the semiotics of the heart and mind. It is a surreal parable to the observance of modern society that does not desire to conform to any norms that have remained redundant since eons. A society that is susceptible to obey their hearts without letting any sort of encumbrance invade their senses when they know what they want out of life. In tune with that trait, I found this film to be a brilliant character study of such notions. The approach has sure been dealt with a casual lilt for a mass appeal I reckon, but it is anything but, since the director manages to induce the precise reaction of daring to live according to what the characters of Bruno, Carla and Rai deem fit regardless of the world’s judgement of it.

Rai


Rai is somewhat furtive, a bit selfishly manipulative, decidedly postmodern, rather ambiguous and free-willed to an extent that he is aware of his seductive effect on people and knows how to lure them in order to muddle with their minds. This he does purely out of innocence and not with an intention to injure. However, underneath those turbulent thoughts and wisdom, he seems to be nurturing a hurtful heart that prods him to find solace in people, dance, martial arts and a certain sense of abandonment in order to fulfil a void caused due to the trauma of his father’s early death and moving about cities with his mother that seems to have given him no sense of belonging. The vulnerable man that he is, he happens to get entangled in his own web when he realises that in order to love someone you have to think of ‘the someone’ before your own self. Experience reveals that the ones who feign control and power are the ones who most require support, and Rai certainly craves the emotional mooring of Bruno and Carla to truly discover himself and when he does, he appears so harrowed that in order to escape from his demons and avoid the dread of acknowledging such sentiments, he packs his bags and hurries away trying to dissociate from the very belief he has been in search of since a long time.

Bruno


Bruno is an affable, soft, sporty, sensitive, and somewhat emotionally restrained young man. He is the Good Samaritan who cannot hurt anybody even if meant getting hurt in the bargain. Although he is not initially inclined to experimenting with anything other than the normal, the very proximity of Rai imbalances him and being the type to explore unexplored territories, he decides to follow his impulses unrestrictedly, freely and fearlessly and embarks on an uncharted journey. Somewhere it is the predominant power of Rai and the comfort that he is trustworthy beyond doubt that induces Bruno to drop his guard claiming that sexuality has nothing to do with love and instead has everything to do with feeding the animal instinct that lies within each one of us.  

I appreciated how the director has displayed the fact that Bruno tends to think that he can have what he wants (from whomever he wants) but when he detects that his very own Carla is attracted to the unmistakable magnetism of Rai, he is suddenly struck by this uncontrollable pang of envy, jealousy and even and finds himself threatened by the very man whom he is so hopelessly beguiled with. This was a lovely onscreen representation of the banal insecurity of human nature.

It is the vulnerability in Llorenç González’s personality that lends Bruno’s character that additional pizzazz. Llorenç is smart, suave and exceptionally charming. His strength reclines in his simplicity. He reflects an alluring spirit and scores optimal in the spheres of an irresistible and winning mass appeal.

Carla



Carla is cute, impulsive and slightly anxious. She tends to get carried away in the moment and adopts this aggressive approach that could actually (in real life) ruin matters. What’s more, she has a wonderful support system in her colleagues and in some way or the other the people in her life seem to salvage her from any doom. It is nice to see how nervously and witlessly she is in love with Bruno until Rai enters her life to complicate and confuse matters making it implicitly evident that she is drawn to him like iron is to a magnet although her love for Bruno, with whom she has been in love since they were fifteen years, remains utterly intact.

The people at her office add just about the right comic quotient to the plot. The cohesion they all share despite the inquisitiveness is something that is a recent phenomenon where one notes that your colleagues become your extended family in a time where people are starving for meaningful company. Together, they go through the ups and downs as anybody would in the situation, and make sure that they watch out for one another.

Another facet of Carla’s character I liked is how she gets out of hiding, pulls back the layers, stares truth in the face and accepts her feelings with verve as she forgives, forgets and flows along with life like water that assumes the course of its current.

The film is packed with some powerful scenes and dialogues. The one in the beginning where Carla elucidates Bruno about how much she has had to put up with his jealousy over the years (even though he has never enforced his insecurities on her) was enough to deal with, than becoming aware of the fact that the man who avows his love for her had cheated on her with another man. Bruno’s natural reaction, “I didn’t plan any of this but I couldn’t help it either.” was an incredibly honest rendering of human emotion and about the fact that the human heart and mind wants so many things that defy logic and yet the prudent way would be to follow ones instinct rather than rationalising it.

Carla’s colleague suspecting Bruno’s sexuality I felt hardly holds any ground here owing to the fact that his character is merely an examination into how we are each made to confront and question our own limitations when faced with the entry of another person into that sequestered space that we do not permit anybody to colonise.

In some ways it is not easy for the mainstream to accept what is being portrayed in El Sexo De Los Ángeles: they are too calcified in their age-old beliefs to accept anything novel. Besides, the film at times is a bit too easy to be true, specifically the part where Carla and Rai get entangled, then again, one has to give the benefit of doubt since life is in the habit to hurling at us unthinkable surprises.

At the end of the day, this is a first-class film about utopia. It is fascinatingly cerebral, ferociously atrocious and incredibly sensual on a level so as to appease the youth, the segment it is intended for. It has an almost magical power, despite its density that makes certain that it keeps you spellbound by its brutal honesty. On several levels I felt it was about personal growth sans any judgement. It was an ode to the present shifting interests in people based on biological wants rather than ethical pedantry. The determinist view here about how we view gender, love and sexuality grasps you with its complexities and advocates you to let go of any such unchartered sentiments that you might find yourself enmeshed by helping you crack the cast due to the taboos laid out by the societal boundaries at large by making you love, laugh and hope with the three angels! It is not a work of genius such a Drei, but it certainly is a work of cinema that is most likely to grow in stature and cited as an example with the passage of time.

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To Us!

This does not need a footnote from me.

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Love Me - 2012



Love Me could very well be mistaken for something like the umpteen teenage movies to hit the screens, except that this one is nothing like any of those for the sole reason that it doesn’t try too hard to make the characters lovable like most such movies with similar subjects try to enforce upon the audience. Here, the characters play out the feelings that any adolescent might be going through while progressing through that discerning and trying phase of their lives, add to that the plotline of three months having passed since the disappearance of Melissa Kennedy in the town of Ridgedale where the suave, silent and sweet Lucas Green (Jamie Johnston) is the lead suspect in her vanishing. Whilst we are being familiarised with the soft and dashing Lucas, enters the strong and nearly mannish Sylvia Potter (Lindsey Shaw) who, if not anything, harbours unrealistic notions of falling in love with an ‘ideal man’ even as she brushes away the overtures of her childhood friend Harry Townsend (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) who keeps renewing his love for her with regularity. Sylvia stumbles over Lucas’s stretched-out feet at Hampton Prep and feels this instant connection with him. Despite her initial animosity for the guy and warning by her close friends, in particular Dayln (Kaitlyn Leeb) she falls hopelessly in love with him until the mystery surrounding Melissa who was Lucas’s girlfriend when she went missing threatens the entire fabric and tests the waters with these school kids.  



As it trudges along, the lesson that this movie teaches us is about how many times have we not had people who are genuine get mistaken for being ‘arseholes’ when the real arseholes are the ones who go about injuring us invisibly and yet we aren’t smart enough to detect who they are amidst us until it is a bit too late.



Psychology brings to light that when someone intends to lie, consciously or unconsciously, the worded expressions they instinctively take refuge in are ‘trust me’ or ‘frankly’ or ‘believe me’ but when Lucas utters those words ‘trust me’ you are instantly overcome by the emotion that you can blindly trust him since those are not words stemming from the hidden untruths one is trying to cloak, but expressions that are most humbly originating from his soul. What’s more, his dialogues are nearly always supported by the blatant truth: it is as if what’s in his heart is on his lips without any hesitation, and isn’t that how we are all supposed to live – believing in ourselves when we know that we are right, even if the world were to think contrary of it?



People say that pain evokes in us the words that touch hearts, and it is also a presumed norm that the mega rich do not have a heart. What people don’t know is that feelings have nothing to do with ones financial touchstones and Lucas’s character is so well essayed in conjunction to that misconception. I was delighted to watch Jamie: the perfect choice for the role. He doesn’t fail to impress you with the genuine hues he lends to the character. Those hues come from his own experiences owing to the fact that he is quite the rock to those who require his attention in order to make their lives better. I say so because Jamie is someone who besides being an actor, has a natural flair to spread love via his work and is quite the man with a golden heart. He plays in a band, and has helped raise money for a school in Kenya, and it would not surprise me that while we are reading this, he might be planning or even doing something in his own capacity to better this world.


If you have observed closely, what Lucas does at every instant on the screen is confess nothing but the facts to Sylvia, and I didn’t quite appreciate how she distrusts him. In one frame of mind, she gives Harry a piece of her mind about how they could try and understand him rather than judge or talk about him, and in another, she falls a victim of hearsay. Agreed the young are unsure and confused, but the golden rule regardless of age is that you ‘never give up’ on the ones you think you know. True love knows to discern between the real and the fake, and instead of standing by him in a moment of her uncertainty, she fails him rather miserably.



Loneliness makes people do many things. While some take the crutch of addiction to beat their desolation, some become the crutch of others to make sure they never let another feel what they are missing. What I adored is how the character of Lucas has been made to be like the ocean, forgiving and yet festive. Forbearing yet frightened. I appreciated the manner in which he follows his heart (in attaining the peace of mind) by doing what he likes even if it is as simple as writing reviews of the music he loves. That apart, there were some beautiful refinements to this film, for instance when Sylvia asks Lucas what his dad does while she’s exploring about his bedroom, he replies with immense modesty, “He travels a lot.” That is a marvellously delicate method of handling an instance that one normally would use to brag or boast being in the position that he is in the film. It only shows us the maturity of the character regardless of what people surmise of him. It takes wisdom to be able to find peace in oneself, to be able to seek solace in loneliness, and what a brilliant man this Lucas is really. Some have argued with me that his character is a bit too forgiving, but aren’t there many amidst us who are like that: who harbour feelings much deeper, while the majority thinks them to be shallow. The other subtlety I treasured, and many of the teens ought to take heed, is how Lucas doesn’t pursue Sylvia until he has made certain that she and her friend Danny do not share any romantic interest. This might sound a bit trivial to the age that thinks they know everything, but that is a great on-screen display of manners and I only wish the youth, specifically men, could nurture such an attribute in case their innate nature hasn’t genetically yielded them this very quality.

The three glaring flaws I found in this film are:

1 – How Lucas tends to always show up at Sylvia’s classroom. Obviously he had classes of his own to attend.

2 – How the super attentive comic book killer friend Harry cannot hear the car approaching the driveway of the cabin when he is forcibly making Lucas write his suicide note. For a moment one could give him the benefit of doubt that he was a bit too self-absorbed to notice what was happening around him, and yet that explanation holds no good really.

3 – Coming to the largest cavern: the female lead’s character could have been essayed better. It seemed as if writer Kat Chandler was in a bit of a hurry given that her characterisation lacked any range and depth.

When someone turns to you in life and expresses, “You know me better than anyone!” and pleads, “Please, please I am losing it, everything seems to messed up. I don’t have anyone.” you NEVER leave them and walk away by uttering coldly, “I can’t be a part of this.” When somebody reaches out to you earnestly and you fail them, you certainly don’t deserve a second chance, but Lucas being Lucas, forgives even that flaw in the character of the woman he loves, although in reality only a handful are like him, and beware people that not all Sylvia’s would be lucky to get a chance to make up for their stupidity.



The supporting cast was satisfactory in their own unique fashion that added the much warranted flavour to the tale. I only wish that specialists had handled the cinematography and the soundtrack in order to lent it the much necessitated charm and enchantment.



To sum up, the kernel of life is such that each of us gets someone who cares for us in some form or the other, and in an instance of that not happening, we find solace in ourselves by giving to others what we have missed in our lives just like Lucas does. A bow to you, Jamie, to having added verve to such an unpretentious and yet profoundly balanced character because what you have done really is service to mankind since those who follow you ardently will try to mimic your good nature and even if it were to change the outlook of a single person, on screen, or otherwise, I think you would consider it a job well done!


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