How the sizzling hot Spanish film Sex And Lucia got past the Ontario government censors is a mystery only they could answer.
I'm just happy it did, because the censors have unfairly stomped on some art films in the recent past due to concerns over the depiction of sexuality on screen.
An unfortunate example is the important and serious French film Fat Girl, which was banned outright, a decision the distributor is still fighting.
In the cast of Sex And Lucia, there is a lot of sex, which should be no surprise considering both the English titles and the original Spanish one, Lucia Y El Sexo (the film plays here in Spanish with English subtitles).
In this case, there is extensive nakedness, all of it artfully rendered on screen. There are several scenes with explicit sexual activity, including a close-up of an erect penis with a woman's hand caressing it. There are also photos the lovers take of themselves that at least appear to include penetration. And there is a scene with another man's erection.
So simply don't go if any of that sounds too much for your personal sensibilities. The choice is up to the viewer, after all. Also don't bother to go if you think that the whole film is a sex romp -- and that's all you want in the movie -- because it certainly is not just that.
Actually, writer-director Medem has a higher purpose here. The heroine is lovely Lucia (the wonderful Spanish actress Paz Vega, who won a Goya, Spain's Oscars, for this role).
She is obsessed with a writer (Tristan Ulloa, a Goya nominee for his role) who can no longer write. He can, however, fall in love and does, with gusto, when Lucia arrives in his life like a sexual storm.
There are complications, of course; otherwise, there would be no conflict, no real story, just the sex. It turns out that our hero unknowingly fathered a child several years earlier on a trip to a fabled island retreat he still holds dear for its moon-bathed nights.
How the mother, the child and a gaggle of other connected people figure into the lives of Lucia and her writer is the ebb and flow of the emotional tide of this film.
At times, it is difficult to fathom what Medem wants us to understand about his characters. They confuse and confound us. So do the daring time shifts in Medem's story construction, as we jump between time periods, between happy times and tragedies, between the written word and the messy facts of life.
Ultimately, however, everything is resolved poetically, without false sentimentality. Sex And Lucia becomes richer, deeper and more interesting than just a coupling of naked bodies on screen. Even the censors seemed to get it.
(This film is rated R)
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