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Sex and Lucia
Palm Pictures // Unrated // October 12, 2010
List Price: $29.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Film:
Billowing music and fuzzy digital typeface for the title credits accompany a swim along the ocean floor at the beginning of Sex and Lucía (Lucía y el sexo). It's an odd, mysterious juxtaposition that familiarizes its audience with a bristly behavior that'll continue throughout Julio Medem's Goya Award-winning film, one that dips its toes into the waters of sexual allure while venturing into the mind of a struggling writer. And yes, there's plenty of carnal activity to be seen, handled with a steamy, almost uncomfortable passion that breeches on voyeurism as its grips our attention. Whether all the sex has a cohesive point is another story, as Sex and Lucía, shot with a mix of lush and overexposed assertiveness by cinematographer Kiko de la Rica, boasts an unsettling-yet-stimulating mood and a few ravishing performances -- especially one from new-comer Paz Vega -- that ultimately lend realism to an impractical, vain erotic fantasy.
Much like Medem's previous film Lovers from the North Pole, Sex and Lucía plays with the structure of time and narrative. At first, we're taken to the present day with Lucía (Vega) working in a restaurant, where she receives a troubling call from her forlorn boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) -- where he cryptically reflects on the secrets of an island trip he took -- that sends her into a panic. After arriving at his empty apartment, finding only a suicide note, Lucía travels towards the island he talked about in a fit of both curiosity and a need to escape. The story then jumps back to six years prior, dropping us in the middle of a sexual swirl between two people in a moonlit ocean who wish to remain anonymous from one another, except for assorted little hints they're dishing out. Lorenzo, the man in that sexual encounter, reminisces over this occurrence in a bar with his publicist some time later, when he then meets wide-eyed, obsessive Lucia.
Lorenzo and Lucía jump into a relationship after sitting together and fervently talking for only a few minutes, thus beginning their amorous affair. Julio Medem's film begins telling the story of their mojo-driven romance through expressive, lurid scenes of love-making and conversations about their love-making, shown as they trade nude Polaroids of one another, strip for each other, and discuss the best sex that Lorenzo's ever had -- which, naturally, rustles up memories about his past that we're privy to. That level of intimacy breathes raw life into the front portion of Sex and Lucía, a heaving invigoration for the senses that's made intriguing on varied levels with the knowledge of what's to come between the lovers -- heightened further when Lorenzo's secrets begin to shape the picture's dramatic poise. Medem taps into a provocatively raw passion here, causing the film to really smolder during its passionate moments.
As effective as the gradient becomes amid both raw and tender passion, Sex and Lucía also can't escape being the vague facade of a straight man's lurid fantasy instead of affective on a dramatic level, whether intentional or not. Lorenzo's escapades with women overstep the bounds of believability into self-indulgent gratification, from the well-timed birthday rendezvous in the ocean to Lucia's assertive ogling in the bar, though Julio Medem's persistence in keeping them vital to the film's significance comes close to rubbing out their impracticality. As the erotic twists and turns intensify later on -- which includes a stunning, pouty-lipped young daughter (Elena Anaya) to a porn star that, just like Lucía and his birthday girl (Najwa Nimri), becomes fixated with him -- this flimsy grasp on practicality further weakens the actual poignancy that it could concoct about sex.
Thankfully, Sex and Lucía reveals that the realism and psychosis of sex simply aren't the point, eventually pivoting around a connection of events that converge into a far-fetched whirlwind of a conclusion. Conflicted novelist Lorenzo begins to write again as he uses his experiences on the island and in his impassioned modern climate to tell a story, which begin to blur the boundaries of reality and his fiction in our line of sight. But when the film's characters are symbolically transpose into the images that Lorenzo paints with his words, and the drama arises around Lorenzo's past, Medem's storytelling fights against implausible plot devices -- a dog attack here, two people chatting on the internet by happenstance there, and others -- that detract from the sincere gravity Lorenzo and Lucía generate early on. This makes the film's temper erratic as it collapses into a Lynchian jumble of surrealism, deliberately making less and less sense as time progresses.
While welcome in a slightly more grounded Mulholland Drive sort of way, this chaos would've been made more potent had Sex and Lucía concentrated more on building a level of identifiableness with its characters instead of using them as puzzle fragments. You know, other than Lucia. An anchor can thankfully still be found in her, played by Paz Vega with insatiable abandon both in and out of the bedroom, which becomes the only one out of the lot that ensnares an evocative center. Director Medem instead focuses on stitching all the pieces together at the conclusion, ratcheting through the hints and triggers he scattered throughout to paint a whirlwind of exposition. Though chaotic in its connect-the-dots inanity and scatterbrained with unrealized cathartic ideas, it still rewards its audience in an odd way as it hits expected points of intrigue with a stringent level of cinematic craftsmanship.
The Blu-ray:
Palm Pictures have presented Sex and Lucía on Blu-ray in its unrated, original cut alone at 128 minutes, which means a healthy amount of sexuality and nudity throughout. The Blu-ray itself arrives in a standard blue case with artwork mirroring the standard-definition release, with inner artwork that features a still shot and a four-paragraph write-up on director Julio Medem and his process.
Video and Audio:
Kiko de la Rica's digitally-shot photography leans towards a highly stylized look, with most of the beach-side exterior shots sporting a heavy white exposure and interior shots drenched in soupy dark contrast, which places some hearty demands on Palm Picture's Blu-ray image. Encapsulated in its theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio within a high-bitrate 1080p AVC encode, the film's look harshly pours through in a fashion that's very befitting with what's intended. The scenes along the sea preserve the glaring white levels that allow only light amounts of color to escape, which hover around very delicate shades of blue and stone colors that can be very pleasing to the eye. Interior sequences, on the other hand, are much more natural in their composition, and the rendering of contrast gradation offers some rich and satisfying shadows. A few exceptions crop up, such as the white levels swallowing up details a bit much in a few scenes and some darker sequences exhibiting heavier digital grain, but the overexposed look looks extremely good when in full force. On top of that, flesh tones are handled accurately and crisply, which becomes important during the, uh, more provocative scenes involving Lucia.
Sex and Lucía also offers an aggressive soundtrack, featuring bass-heavy musical cues, a thick array of vocal levels, and pleasing ambient effects, all of which this Spanish DTS HD Master Audio track capture with surprising elegance. Brooding bass riffs boom throughout the sound stage from the get-go, aggressively rumbling to the lower frequency -- though the power's actually a bit thicker than needed. The rushing of water and the revving of Lucia's dirt bike showcase flickers of sound that reach to the rear channels, carrying through with clear, rich effects that spread along both the high and low-end expanses of the sound stage. Verbal clarity flows through with a natural, crisp keel that supports both the whispers and the high-impact argumentative tones. Palm's audio treatment handles the demands of the mix of delicate and powerful elements in the film with aplomb. Subtitles are available in English,
Special Features:
Palm Pictures carries over the special features from their previously-released DVD, without including anything else to the mix. The spotlight to he material comes in a Making of Sex and Lucía Featurette (25:32, HD AVC Letterbox), which takes on the familiar assembly structure as it steps through the different characters. The most intriguing element of the piece comes in the behind-the-scenes shots, which splice between the somewhat generic character exposition pouring from the actors. Palm have also carried over the collection of Cast Interviews (28:16, HD AVC 4x3), Photo Gallery, Cast Biographies, Soundtrack Excerpts, and Trailers (4:10, HD AVC 16x9).
Final Thoughts:
Half erotic fantasy and half Lynchian semi-surrealist puzzle piece, Sex and Lucía relishes in its steamy content until the point where the inherent mystery catches momentum. Paz Vega's raw, unflinching performance helps the film through its patches of disbelief and indulgent titillation, though the plot twists and turns are, at times, unable to be overlooked. But the end result, a saucy spiral of contorted revelations that interconnect with elements scattered throughout writer/director Julio Medem's picture, lingers as a moody and passionate mystery. Palm Pictures' strongly Recommended Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific, while carrying over all the extras from the previous standard definition release.
Thomas Spurlin, Staff Reviewer -- DVDTalk Reviews | Personal Blog/Site
Billowing music and fuzzy digital typeface for the title credits accompany a swim along the ocean floor at the beginning of Sex and Lucía (Lucía y el sexo). It's an odd, mysterious juxtaposition that familiarizes its audience with a bristly behavior that'll continue throughout Julio Medem's Goya Award-winning film, one that dips its toes into the waters of sexual allure while venturing into the mind of a struggling writer. And yes, there's plenty of carnal activity to be seen, handled with a steamy, almost uncomfortable passion that breeches on voyeurism as its grips our attention. Whether all the sex has a cohesive point is another story, as Sex and Lucía, shot with a mix of lush and overexposed assertiveness by cinematographer Kiko de la Rica, boasts an unsettling-yet-stimulating mood and a few ravishing performances -- especially one from new-comer Paz Vega -- that ultimately lend realism to an impractical, vain erotic fantasy. Much like Medem's previous film Lovers from the North Pole, Sex and Lucía plays with the structure of time and narrative. At first, we're taken to the present day with Lucía (Vega) working in a restaurant, where she receives a troubling call from her forlorn boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) -- where he cryptically reflects on the secrets of an island trip he took -- that sends her into a panic. After arriving at his empty apartment, finding only a suicide note, Lucía travels towards the island he talked about in a fit of both curiosity and a need to escape. The story then jumps back to six years prior, dropping us in the middle of a sexual swirl between two people in a moonlit ocean who wish to remain anonymous from one another, except for assorted little hints they're dishing out. Lorenzo, the man in that sexual encounter, reminisces over this occurrence in a bar with his publicist some time later, when he then meets wide-eyed, obsessive Lucia.
Lorenzo and Lucía jump into a relationship after sitting together and fervently talking for only a few minutes, thus beginning their amorous affair. Julio Medem's film begins telling the story of their mojo-driven romance through expressive, lurid scenes of love-making and conversations about their love-making, shown as they trade nude Polaroids of one another, strip for each other, and discuss the best sex that Lorenzo's ever had -- which, naturally, rustles up memories about his past that we're privy to. That level of intimacy breathes raw life into the front portion of Sex and Lucía, a heaving invigoration for the senses that's made intriguing on varied levels with the knowledge of what's to come between the lovers -- heightened further when Lorenzo's secrets begin to shape the picture's dramatic poise. Medem taps into a provocatively raw passion here, causing the film to really smolder during its passionate moments.
As effective as the gradient becomes amid both raw and tender passion, Sex and Lucía also can't escape being the vague facade of a straight man's lurid fantasy instead of affective on a dramatic level, whether intentional or not. Lorenzo's escapades with women overstep the bounds of believability into self-indulgent gratification, from the well-timed birthday rendezvous in the ocean to Lucia's assertive ogling in the bar, though Julio Medem's persistence in keeping them vital to the film's significance comes close to rubbing out their impracticality. As the erotic twists and turns intensify later on -- which includes a stunning, pouty-lipped young daughter (Elena Anaya) to a porn star that, just like Lucía and his birthday girl (Najwa Nimri), becomes fixated with him -- this flimsy grasp on practicality further weakens the actual poignancy that it could concoct about sex. Thankfully, Sex and Lucía reveals that the realism and psychosis of sex simply aren't the point, eventually pivoting around a connection of events that converge into a far-fetched whirlwind of a conclusion. Conflicted novelist Lorenzo begins to write again as he uses his experiences on the island and in his impassioned modern climate to tell a story, which begin to blur the boundaries of reality and his fiction in our line of sight. But when the film's characters are symbolically transpose into the images that Lorenzo paints with his words, and the drama arises around Lorenzo's past, Medem's storytelling fights against implausible plot devices -- a dog attack here, two people chatting on the internet by happenstance there, and others -- that detract from the sincere gravity Lorenzo and Lucía generate early on. This makes the film's temper erratic as it collapses into a Lynchian jumble of surrealism, deliberately making less and less sense as time progresses.
While welcome in a slightly more grounded Mulholland Drive sort of way, this chaos would've been made more potent had Sex and Lucía concentrated more on building a level of identifiableness with its characters instead of using them as puzzle fragments. You know, other than Lucia. An anchor can thankfully still be found in her, played by Paz Vega with insatiable abandon both in and out of the bedroom, which becomes the only one out of the lot that ensnares an evocative center. Director Medem instead focuses on stitching all the pieces together at the conclusion, ratcheting through the hints and triggers he scattered throughout to paint a whirlwind of exposition. Though chaotic in its connect-the-dots inanity and scatterbrained with unrealized cathartic ideas, it still rewards its audience in an odd way as it hits expected points of intrigue with a stringent level of cinematic craftsmanship.
The Blu-ray:
 |  |
Palm Pictures have presented Sex and Lucía on Blu-ray in its unrated, original cut alone at 128 minutes, which means a healthy amount of sexuality and nudity throughout. The Blu-ray itself arrives in a standard blue case with artwork mirroring the standard-definition release, with inner artwork that features a still shot and a four-paragraph write-up on director Julio Medem and his process.
Video and Audio:
Kiko de la Rica's digitally-shot photography leans towards a highly stylized look, with most of the beach-side exterior shots sporting a heavy white exposure and interior shots drenched in soupy dark contrast, which places some hearty demands on Palm Picture's Blu-ray image. Encapsulated in its theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio within a high-bitrate 1080p AVC encode, the film's look harshly pours through in a fashion that's very befitting with what's intended. The scenes along the sea preserve the glaring white levels that allow only light amounts of color to escape, which hover around very delicate shades of blue and stone colors that can be very pleasing to the eye. Interior sequences, on the other hand, are much more natural in their composition, and the rendering of contrast gradation offers some rich and satisfying shadows. A few exceptions crop up, such as the white levels swallowing up details a bit much in a few scenes and some darker sequences exhibiting heavier digital grain, but the overexposed look looks extremely good when in full force. On top of that, flesh tones are handled accurately and crisply, which becomes important during the, uh, more provocative scenes involving Lucia.
Sex and Lucía also offers an aggressive soundtrack, featuring bass-heavy musical cues, a thick array of vocal levels, and pleasing ambient effects, all of which this Spanish DTS HD Master Audio track capture with surprising elegance. Brooding bass riffs boom throughout the sound stage from the get-go, aggressively rumbling to the lower frequency -- though the power's actually a bit thicker than needed. The rushing of water and the revving of Lucia's dirt bike showcase flickers of sound that reach to the rear channels, carrying through with clear, rich effects that spread along both the high and low-end expanses of the sound stage. Verbal clarity flows through with a natural, crisp keel that supports both the whispers and the high-impact argumentative tones. Palm's audio treatment handles the demands of the mix of delicate and powerful elements in the film with aplomb. Subtitles are available in English,
Special Features:
Palm Pictures carries over the special features from their previously-released DVD, without including anything else to the mix. The spotlight to he material comes in a Making of Sex and Lucía Featurette (25:32, HD AVC Letterbox), which takes on the familiar assembly structure as it steps through the different characters. The most intriguing element of the piece comes in the behind-the-scenes shots, which splice between the somewhat generic character exposition pouring from the actors. Palm have also carried over the collection of Cast Interviews (28:16, HD AVC 4x3), Photo Gallery, Cast Biographies, Soundtrack Excerpts, and Trailers (4:10, HD AVC 16x9).
Final Thoughts:
Half erotic fantasy and half Lynchian semi-surrealist puzzle piece, Sex and Lucía relishes in its steamy content until the point where the inherent mystery catches momentum. Paz Vega's raw, unflinching performance helps the film through its patches of disbelief and indulgent titillation, though the plot twists and turns are, at times, unable to be overlooked. But the end result, a saucy spiral of contorted revelations that interconnect with elements scattered throughout writer/director Julio Medem's picture, lingers as a moody and passionate mystery. Palm Pictures' strongly Recommended Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific, while carrying over all the extras from the previous standard definition release.
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