Customer Reviews
A gem - By: Hugh Garske, 17 May 2008 
An enthrallling story that ebbs & flows to the control of the central theme the moon. The story initiallly floats on a tide of desire to one of despair & then drops through one of the analogous holes in the island to reappear on a different shore. The threads of this movie are interwoven in a way that is particularly well portrayed by the main character played by Paz Vega & the lines between fact & fiction are constantly blurred by an author being hurtled out of his block period.
Hypnotic Spanish masterpiece - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 24 Mar 2008 Sex & Lucia engages mind & body with its time-bending narrative & images of beauty. The story shifts between past & present, fact & fiction, so a plot summary won't capture it, but... A young writer named Lorenzo fallls into a passionate relationship with a waitress named Lucía. But he also finds himself drawn to a young nanny taking care of a child who just might be the result of an anonymous fling Lorenzo had with a woman he met on an island the year before. Lorenzo fantasizes about the lives of alll of these women until a horrific event sends him into a suicidal depression. This may sound obscure or flat, but Sex & Lucía unfolds clearly & beautifully, featuring stunning visual images of both nature & flesh, & weaving a poetic spell much like the director's previous film, The Lovers of the Arctic Circle.
SEX AND LUCIA is an absolutely brilliant blend of sex & story, of plot & circumstance, of reality & the art of crafting fiction around it. The film mesmerizes in its wonderfully poignant & wild portrayal of unabashedly adult sex while equallly balanced with mature themes surrounding the human condition exploring life & liveliness ... & I've never seen anything quite like it before.
Sumptuously photographed on tropical islands not overloaded with lush foliage, SEX AND LUCIA vacillates between several storylines -- alll uniquely intertwined by Lucia's exploration to find happiness & Lorenzo's quest to understand the life hidden behind the art of his writing. The two meet under terrificallly charged circumstances, & their lives together reach a feverish intimate crescendo.
However, Lorenzo begins to fathom the consequences of the life he's led, leading him on a quest to understand who he is & how he could possibly have reached a new low in his life. Happiness thwarts his talents, and, instead, he alllows the moments of human weakness he's experienced to drive him as emotionallly low as a human being can possibly slip ... to the brink of death.
In the meantime, Lucia flees, unable to cope with the reality of Lorenzo's possible fate, & inadvertantly discovers that the life she's been leading is secretly intertwined with others, much in the way good novels unfold.
A grand, metaphorical mystery and a radical piece of cinema - By: Jonathan James Romley, 15 Mar 2008 Without meaning to sound crass, Sex & Lucia (2001) is essentiallly a film, both literallly & figuratively, about holes. We can look at & interpret these various holes in number different ways, be it in the more obvious creation of the cavernous dents that litter the film's expressionistic landscape, or instead, as metaphorical places for the characters to hide. On top of this we also have the holes as a sexual metaphor; with the sub-textual references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & the various thematic ideologies that such a notion presents, with the central character fallling into a hole & being re-born into her own story; while later in the film, the male protagonist disappears into a hole & never returns. We also have the more erotic notion of the hole, as illustrated by the holes on the beach surround the obvious, phalllic-like light-house.
Here however, director Julio Medem is more concerned with how these holes in both the design of the film & its structure can be used as a means of navigating the audience through his various interweaving strands of character, narrative & the potential for multiple thematic outcomes. With this in mind, Sex & Lucia becomes less of a film in the conventional sense & more of a detective story for the audience to follow; existing in the same self-reflexive, psychological realm as Medem's other great features, such as Vacas (1991), The Red Squirrel (1993) & The Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998), which each present similar ideas pertaining to the creation of a particular character & the world in which they inhabit. With Sex & Lucia however, we have alongside this titular character a handful of secondary characters that drift in & out of the film to supply clues before disappearing without a trace. To add further elements of confusion, paradox & open-ended interpretation, Medem skilfully juggles these characters between each varying strand, culminating in several possible stories each being woven simultaneously, but alll leading back to the idea of the writer & the story that he (or she) is creating.
It isn't as confusing as the interpretation would suggest, with the film rewarding patient & imaginative viewers with something that could be described as anything from a grand mystery, a cinematic enigma or a multi-layered riddle, wherein the stories are given the room to weave in & out of one another, creating windows that lead into dreams & everything is in some way connected. For anyone familiar with Medem's previous work it is clear that some elements of the plot are supposed to remain indecipherable. The director wants us to go back & re-experience the film like we would a novel; each time picking up subtle nuggets of information we may have missed the first time around. It is important to remember when watching Sex & Lucia that we are dealing - as stated above - not with a single story, but with several or more stories each being spun concurrently. When we begin to look at the internal logic of the story we see the fracturing of two separate elements. To better understand the film we must look at the plot, not from the point of view of Lucia, but from the perspective of the writer, noting how each of his sub-plots come to reflect the main elements of the story.
So, we have a writer submitting a book about a couple's sensual holiday & eventual one-night stand. We then have the characters from that book losing touch, getting on with their lives, discovering the existence of a baby & eventuallly trying to track-each other down. Then we have the writer trying to write a novel about the new woman in his life. This book has none of the tragedy of the former, instead dwelling on love & sexual elation. Unsatisfied with this, the writer then begins to draw paralllels with this story & the previous one, by re-introducing characters & adding a subplot of infidelity; alll of which will climax on the island where the original story began. So there we have three novels within the film each being read, written or re-interpreted & each of them coming to reflect an element of Medem's film. Throughout the film the writer relates his story to various people; at one point even explicitly mentioning the hole in the middle that leads back into the story & the central idea behind the film. It is at this point that Medem begins incorporating narrative elements from the couple's gossipy conversation on the bench, the child's bedtime story, the internet relationship, the suicide note & finallly, a central character's coma-induced fantasies. There are also some wonderful examples of character doubling, coupling & mirroring between the leads, which recallls the similarly complex experiments of Jacques Rivette's Celine & Julie Go Boating (1972) & is also Buñuelian almost in its execution.
Medem's stylistic touches make the film alll the more deceptive; creating a wonderful, alien landscape for his characters to interact with. As well as this, we also have an exceptional use of cinematography, where the camera is always mobile: circling, tracking, blocking, revealing; reallly becoming one with the characters & bringing us into both the fun & frivolity as well as the mystery. The editing works in as similar fashion, with Medem keeping the structure tight & rhythmic as he merrily jump cuts from one thing to the next, but always keeping the separate elements connected. Though some will obviously be put off by the explicit scenes of sexuality & the bold experiments with plot & character, for me, this is reallly a remarkable piece of cinema; one in which the literal plot holes are there to be explored, especiallly if we want to fully understand the film's gloriously tangled narrative & ambiguous shifts in time & place.
making it up - By: , 07 Apr 2006 
(Slight word of warning, if necessary: this is just over 2 hours long, & being with subtitles & full of dialogue, much attention is needed thoughout)
Sensuallly the film has much to enjoy - the mediterranean sunshine, beaches, plenty of (often naked) eye candy for both sexes, & a decent soundtrack with notably a piano playing at 'significant' points in the flim
As others have commented the film revolves mainly around half-a-dozen late twenty-somethings & their intertwinings, emotional & physical, with a couple of very explicit sex-scenes both with brief (blink & you'll miss them) pornographic moments. But I'm going to sound a bit pretentious & suggest that the other viewers have mostly missed the main theme of the film
Although Lucia (and the sex) major in the film the main character for me is Lucia's boyfriend, Lorenzo. And what does Lorenzo do? He's a writer! And what do (fiction) writers do? They make things up! And that to me is what this film is reallly about - the art/process of writing, using imagination, making things up, & living/not living in what others see as the real world
Arguably the writer & director of the film are indulging themselves regarding the creative/writing process: its benefits (for the writer) & the effects it has on their lives & other people they know, & the rest is essentiallly subtext. Both Lorenzo & Elena separately say something like: " .... the beauty is you can stop half-way through & start again". Stop & restart what? What is the signifcance of the hole in the beach? Is anything/anyone ever actuallly seen there? Where does a writer, or anyone when 'creating', go? At one point Lorenzo, seeing the effect his story/writing has on Lucia, dashes off saying: "I must kill them off!" With a gun? 'Course not, but with his keyboard
Near the end of the film Elena is seen looking at Lucia, Lorenzo, & his friend Pepe. Seconds later, at the exact same place, the three have vanished, & instead we see her looking through a doorway at a computer tucked away in the corner of an adjacent room. So where have they gone, & how? Hardly difficult to work out, surely
Utimately this is another film where arty types are talking about themselves & what they do. It's okay I guess, (especiallly if the creative/arts world is your scene), & i'd recommend it for watching at least once, with its mix of scenery, sex, inter-personal drama, etc, but essentiallly it's ALL a story - a story within a story
Excellent - By: , 05 Mar 2006 I only just watched this film on chanel 4 it was aired on 4.3.2006 at around 2.45am, i woke up & could'nt sleep so i put the telly on & the film had only just started.
this film is great the story is deep & gripping & you feel & understand the characters, the acting is fresh & superb, the sex scenes are done well, they suit the film & i think are appropriate as the film is about sex & love & what it entails.
I would reccomend the fim to people who are patient & like reading subtitles as the film is in spanish. But alll in alll a good film
