Popular reviews

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  Review by C4rlo5 ★★★

  “La chica espera en la cara bonita a que el cangrejo atraviese la fea, la rugosa… y horrible.”

  Well what to say about this Spanish piece, the title talks by itself, the problem I found is that it can be a bit confusing at parts and that becomes annoying.

  Anyway leaving every flaw aside I also found really interesting all the storylines and how the plot was developed. The thing is that when a director wants to travel from past to present to past to present, there’s a big risk of boring the viewer, perhaps requiring an extremely high concentration to understand everything…

  “Un rayo de sol…” 🌞🎶
  
  List of movies I watched from Amazon prime Spain 🇪🇸 
  Spanish Movies 🇪🇸

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★½ 3

  Cinematic Time Capsule
  2001 Marathon - Film #106

  Her name is Lucia.
  A ray of sunshine.

  This soft-core Spanish drama lives up to it’s title in that it gives you lots of sex and a whole lot of Lucia. The plot centers around her relationship with a writer who’s writing a novel that blends the reality of his sexual life with the fantasies of his imagination. Eventually it all blends together in a web of interlocking relationships and a heartbreaking tragedy.

  It’s all presented as a sort of dream poem with cinematography that cranks the white balance up to eleven.

  As for viewer enjoyment?
  I’d say much like sex, results may vary…

  ”People get dizzy here during high tide. And no one knows why.”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★½ 4

  An entirely bewildering piece of cinematic art. Medem explores the underestimated block of the writer's mind and lets us aboard a high-speed subway of sexual perdition, redemption, forgiveness and the liberation of the flesh, elements that beautifully become mere colors in the artist's palette. Once again, opportunity cost is the core of experimentation, while the sun burns, while the wind blows, while the sea roars... Simply sublime.

  I had never seen sex portrayed with such artistry.

  95/100

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 1

  I'm not entirely sure what to say about this movie. It's very bright and dark at the same time that adds to its strange, watery metaphors and visual aesthetic. It seems to be about isolation and disconnection and the futility of those as ways of life, yet it feels very disconnected in its narration. Its characters seem desperate to have a meaningful relationship somehow, ignoring the ones they already have. It revels in gratuitous nudity and softcore sex, and shows a wide range of emotional moments via the various encounters.

  This strange, seemingly varied approach makes it seem in print to be a muddled film, but it holds its aesthetic and themes together well enough (as far as I can…

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  Review by russman ★★★ 7

  Just when I was about to finish this movie, it rewound itself to the halfway point. Strange.

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  Review by DNA cinephile🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★★

  Sex and Lucía. 2001. Directed by Julio Medem.

  Albert Iglesias (regular Almodovar composer) developed a heart warming soundtrack for this drama/romance/fantasy based on an author who is writing a novel. However, the audience may have difficulty at first determining what is reality and what is being written in the book (Similar to Swimming Pool 2003). Paz Vega (Lucia), Tristan Ulloa (Lorenzo), Najwa Nimri (Elena), and Elena Anaya (Belen) round out a genius cast. Lucia and Elena become friends but, little do they know the shared something very sacred. In addition, Julio Medem utilized the islands of Formentera, Belearic Islands, Spain as a metaphor for a mystical island that grants wishes, enables one to reincarnate as one wishes, and also serves as a place to heal. I highly recommend this film for adults who like fantasy based romances from the early 2000’s

  Own on AppleTV.
  Also available on Tubi, Amazon Prime, and MUBI.

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  Review by ALISTAIR LEACH ★★★★

  Decide to dust this one off and two things spring to mind

  1) not being a prude but I'm amazed here in the UK this wasn't cut more by the BBFC as there are a few instances of "semi errect".

  2) never ever ever ever bring a stranger to babysit.

  Ok, first hour comes across a soft core mystery played in flashback, 2nd hour gives you the dark emotion payoff to the story. Sometime the characters and balance between fiction and reality can be a bit muddled but the closing of the narrative actually successfully ties up all the narrative strands and can give decent closure (which takes a skill to do). The sex scenes are handled very well, actually…

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  Review by Graham ★★

  It's amazing how you can have a gorgeous location, beautiful people, a fairly simple screenplay, great backing track and the voluptuousness of the Spanish language and yet, feel completely disconnected from the movie and all of the characters in it.

  For something set in such a lovely warm climate, this is just plain cold. And boring.
  Yeah, nah.

  Watched as part of Scavenger Hunt #62 | May 2020 - #10/31

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  Review by megan ★★½

  wild

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  Review by Enfant du Siècle ★★★

  A story of love and desire, intertwined fates and a painful past imbued with melancholy and a glimmer of hope. Lucía y el Sexo reaches certain moments of clarity when it tries to approach the poetry and dreamlike quality of Los Amantes del Círculo Polar, although it never manages to reach such a high plateau. Other than that, Medem's film is more like a self-indulgent, pseudo-deep erotic fantasy that is frankly too convoluted and ambitious.

  --- Español

  Historia de amor y deseo, destinos entrelazados y un doloros pasado imbuida de melancolía con un resquicio de esperanza. Lucía y el Sexo logra ciertos momentos de lucidez cuando intenta acercarse a la poesía y el onirismo de Los Amantes del Círculo Polar, aunque jamás logra alcanzar tan alto techo. Fuera de eso, el film de Medem se asemeja más a un fantasía erótica autocplaciente y pseudo profunda que francamente resulta demasiado intrincada y ambiciosa.

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  Review by Brian Formo ★★★

  Sex and Lucia is cisgender-heteronormative Almodovar. As such, it heats up, entertains, but it also sweeps aside the tawdry and ribald beginnings in favorite of a neatly packaged and tidy... middle.

  It's an occasional chore of stacked circumstances, moon shots, and novelist tropes (I can't stand characters who say aloud the words they're writing lol). But it's quite evocative when it embraces sex as psyche. Such as Lucia's all-consuming passion leads her to sigh "I'm dying, I'm dying" as she orgasms; unwavering lust brought her trust and stability and the pinnacle is loss of self. Also when Belen, the nanny, meets with the novelist on a park bench to talk about her former porno actress mother and how she likes…

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  Review by J. Winston ★★★★½

  Starring Paz Vega as "Amélie who fucks", basically. No wonder this is such a perennial entry-level arthouse favorite, or at least it was for me. I was actually surprised that this holds up as well as it does. This was a favorite of mine as a budding cinephile teen (the perfect time to watch it), for reasons that are embarrassingly, endearingly obvious to me now, but none of the other Julio Medem films I've seen since have impressed me at all, and in fact have largely rubbed me the wrong way. Something about Medem's schtick (which essentially boils down to "horny Kieslowski") works mysteriously well here, for whatever reason, which I'm sure is why it remains Medem's best-known film (although…