Sex And Lucia

Writer/director Julio Medem’s film is impossible to synopsize—something about a waitress (Paz Vega), her novelist lover (Tristan Ulloa), a long-ago one-night stand by which the novelist fathered a child, and his efforts to put odds and ends of his own life into his latest book. All very stylish and beautifully photographed, but far more trouble than it’s worth, with fantasy mixing with reality and actors playing more than one role just to add to the confusion. The sex scenes are the film’s bread and butter, and they’re startlingly frank. But like the French film Fat Girl or the British Intimacy, it’s just another piece of gratuitous Europorn pushing the envelope to win back American audiences. The main difference is that Medem’s Spanish variety suggests that sex might actually be fun.