Spoilers Note: Okay, this is a film that a lot of people are going to want to read about after they see it. So, go see it, it's awesome. Then, come back and read all about my thoughts. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT spoil this movie by reading about it first.

"Sex and Lucia" is one of the best films I've seen this year. I wasn't really even that interested in it but I got invited to a sneak, so I went. Wow. This script is awesome, the acting is amazing, and the photography is stunning. The lead actress, Paz Vega, is gorgeous as well. And the film is punctuated by some of the most graphic sex scenes I've ever seen in a movie. This film is Not Rated and often borders on pornography. Not in a bad or prurient way, mind you. The titular sex is here for a reason and it gives the film a real, audacious flavor.

Now, watching "Sex and Lucia" I often thought it was the best film about the writing process I'd seen since "Barton Fink." After all, Lucia lives with a writer and his efforts to write a new novel are a great part of the plot. But later in the film I began to wonder if the film wasn't about the reader rather than the writer. After all, Lucia is reading her lover's book in secret as he is writing it and his writing is often played out on screen in a plot that seems to reflect his real experiences, which she sees through his "eyes," so to speak.

BIG SPOILER ALERT!

But when all is said and done, I think "Sex and Lucia" is about fatherhood and the fear of fatherhood. Notice the last shot of the film when Lucia and her lover are reunited in their apartment, a (very) slight suggestion is made that she is pregnant. Taking this into account, the whole film suggests that the story involving her lover is simply his novel. Lucia puts herself in the story as she is reading it. That is why she goes to the island, she hears the tragic news at the beginning of the film, etc... She is the reader and the film is told mainly from her point of view as a reader. But the story is by her lover and the story is about a man struggling with the idea of fatherhood. Lucia is pregnant. The story in his novel (with the island, the nanny, the daughter, and such) is his story he has written which has a real and tangible vibe about his fear of fatherhood underscoring it. In my opinion, none of this stuff really happens in REALITY. Rather, it happens in his novel which Lucia is reading and in which she, as reader, places herself as a character (as a reader does somewhat).

On even another level: Is the back story to Lucia and her lover's relationship actually a REALITY? Do they meet in the way suggested, where she confronts him as a lover of his novels? Or is this yet another analogy in how Lucia feels about the lover. Is this why she is so forward in telling him her feelings about him? Is this seduction an analogy for picking up a book by an author we love and bedding down with it? Does Lucia even really know the author in reality?

Why the sex? Is the sex a metaphor for the writer/reader relationship, The strip tease embodying the subtle teasing between author and reader? The passionate sexuality works both in the story as metaphor for that relationship as well as Lucia's immersion in the "plot" being unfolded in the book she is reading. She must know how intimate and how sexual the main character (the author's alter-ego) of the book is to understand his shift in mental state from fornicater to father. The sex implies a basic and human need which will soon be sublimated to caring for the needs of the other. This is the angst of the expectant father, of course. So sex is important to the story-within-the-story because the loss of sex is the basic underlying fear of every expectant parent, especially the father.

Of course I could be dead wrong about all this.

"Sex and Lucia," as hopefully you have experienced, is a complex, multi-layered, engrossing, enigmatic and beautiful film. The script is refreshing and new. The digital photography is simply gorgeous to look at. The ambiguity of the film draws us in rather than distances us. Everything about "Sex and Lucia" works. This is one of the best films you will ever see.

And it's got some graphic sex in it is as well. You can't go wrong.

Note:

In Spanish with subtitles and sparse English.

The film was nominated for several Goya awards and won for Best New Actress (Vega) and Best Score by Alberto Iglesias.

The film was released in 2001 in Spain and premiered in the US at Sundance in January 2002.

Filmed in Madrid and on the Balearic Islands.

Report Card Script: A+ Acting: A+ Cinematography\Lighting: A+ Special Effects\Make Up: A+ Music: A+ Final Grade: A+

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