Sexo Con Amor is a glorified soap-opera and has become the most successful home grown film in Chilean cinematic history. Its soap opera status is no bad thing, in fact the film's success stems from the fact that, like the previous reocrd holding film, El Chacotero Sentimental, which itself was based on a radio programme, it provides a refreshing slice of reality of what the real Chilean gets up to in bed.
In a country by tradition conseravtive and Catholic, it may surprise viewers to see the director having sex with his teenage niece on top of a washing machine, or his wife masturbating with a courgette, yet this comic hyperbole serves to emphasise the fact that Chileans ARE at times unfaithful, they do have sex before marriage. Indeed, the apparent soap opera layer to the film masks the issues raised. As the title implies, the film focuses on the issues of sex and love, and the 6 main protagonists comprise 3 couples who attend an evening class to discuss the problems they have with their sex lives. Among the problems which director Boris Quercia relates to the viewers are those of infidelity (in a country where divorce is illegal), unwanted pregnancy (in a country where abortion is illegal), homosexuality (in a continent where machismo dominates) and incest. Alcohol, drugs, and violence play secondary roles to the sexual politics taking place. The extreme comedy provided by the explosion of truths surrounding the Chilean en la cama projects the film as a statement in Latin American film - this is the Chilean in all his naked glory. Many will criticise the soap opera 'dumbing down' of major issues, but this accessibility has reached the largest audience in domestic film history, and also, those critics would do well to read a book by Mario Vargas Llosa 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter'. Not only does this book provide the Latin American opinion of the Argentine, but it portrays the soap opera as a central part of contemporary culture, which it is. Soap opera becomes escapism, art, and most importantly, reality. It also subtley raises issues such as divorce, the role of the father figure, and national identity. Quercia uses soap opera for the same effects. Social criticisms are raised in a comic manner, and the film helps to define a recent boom in Chilean cinema, alongside El Chacotero Sentimental and Taxi Para Tres.
The authentic chileanness is what comes to define this film. Mise-en-scene such as glasses of pisco-sour, bottles of vino tinto chileno, images of Cerro San Cristobal, Alvaro eating Reineta fish, talk of the World Cup in '98 - this is Chilean film basking in its Chileanness. The language of a cast plucked mainly from soap operas, such as ex-Pura Sangre star Sigrid Alegria, is a strong Chilean brand of Castellano, 'como estay?' 'al tiro' 'huevon' etc, make the film truely Chilean. As a foreigner watching the film shortly after its release in Cine Hoyts Huerfanos in Santiago, the scene when Pato Contreras sits in his car, swearing at Alegria for leaving him for her own boyfriend, his tirade of Chilean insults ('concha su madre' etc), made me, and the other 1000 people present, laugh out loud. I released that the locals where actually laughing at themselves, at their idiosyncratic way of speaking Spanish. Finally there was a film, 100% Chilean, with which Chilean people could identify, with which a Chilean director could raise social questions without he himself 'disappearing' (as in the days of the Military Regime). Sexo Con Amor may be an extended soap opera, but it is a defining moment in Chilean, and in Latin American, film history.
