Habitación en Roma

Room in Rome is the story of a short-lived physical and emotional liaison between two women in a hotel room in the last night of summer. It would be a night of intense discovery, a tour de force between two ways of seeing life, love and sex.

The story is inspired in the Chilean movie En la Cama, which at its turn was inspired by the American film Before the Sunrise. However, the setting and dialogs have been reworked and reinvented by Medem, as the story happens in Rome and the couple has the same sex.

Julio's Medem's well known mastery and filming sensibility are seen everywhere in this movie.

The use of the lighting and framing of the images are precious, elegant, warm and welcoming, very artistically composed with a great use of chiaroscuro and decoration. The room, which is the main set in which the movie happens, is not overwhelmingly present or a close asphyxiating place, but a very open fluid ethereal container where the story happens. Medem positions and moves the camera so the viewer feels is in the room, not watching the room. The spacial perspective is, therefore, very different. This is necessary as otherwise the movie would have felt oppressive and theatrical not a real and cinematic.

There is something magic about the way Medem has used the paintings in the room as well s the decoration of the ceilings, the three spaces of the room (dormitory, bathroom and balcony) and the decorative elements in it, not only to offer different facets of the personality of the characters, or show different phases in their relationship, but to incorporate those little visual elements into the story, like the little angels on the ceiling, the Venus on the bedside table, etc. This is very Medem, who always uses the surroundings as part of the story not as a mere decorative item. This movie reminded me of Medem's Chaotic Anna, in the way he incorporates art into life, and gives art a meaning that is never decorative or purely aesthetic.

The movie could have been claustrophobic and theatrical, but it is instead fresh and cinematic. The story, despite happening in the room, goes well beyond the room through the conversations of the characters and their use of the Internet to show pieces of their present and identities.

Medem also shows a wonderful direction of the actors, which is reduced to the two leading actresses and four very secondary roles. The bed scenes are very erotic, definitely hot, still tastefully filmed.

The two main actress are great in their role, especially Elena Anaya as the honest and emotionally fragile Spaniard lesbian Alba. She believes her role, and gives all what she has, showing a great acting registry from comedy to tragedy, from sweetness to cockiness. Natasha Yarovenko is not as good, but still believable as the mysterious athletic sincere and strong hetero Russian beauty, shocked by her own attraction towards Alba. There seems to be certain intimacy between the camera and the actresses, an understanding and acceptance that makes the story believable. Moreover, the two actress have a great chemistry on camera and, that is extremely important in a movie like this.

The main problem, to me, with the movie is going over the top in the drawing of the characters, so they seem somewhat removed from the viewer, not always believable. 1/ Do the characters need to have perfect bodies for the story be more believable? I mean, the two actresses have wow bodies, especially Yarovenko, so you feel that it is pure logic that they felt attracted to each other. What about having the same story with two actresses that feel attracted to each other but look more normal and less gorgeous? Said in other words, characters for which the physic attraction is not that so obvious, still equally strong. Otherwise, you are stereotyping lesbians and bi-curious as gorgeous girls only attracted to super-dudder gals. 2/ Do the characters need to have such a high professional profile to be more interesting? I don't think so. A normal person can have a great story to tell, immense depth in her soul, be very hot and attractive, and still be an office worker, for example. Finally, despite he music being very beautify, it is also very repetitive and you end resenting it.

To be honest, when I heard that Medem wanted to film a movie like this, I thought that it was just out of character. But, after watching it, I think he has adopted the story and made it completely his. A story that I thought would not interest me at all, and, on the contrary, I enjoyed immensely.

Reading the reviews that other people have written it seems that people either 'get' this movie or they don't.

Some people just seem to see it as a pseudo-erotic softcore film starring a couple of naked chicks, whereas other people see it as a beautiful piece of cinematography.

If you're amongst the latter, cool, if you're the former you might be best sticking to Saw IV and the like :-) Room in Rome is a well thought-out, cleverly scripted, and beautifully shot film. Yes, it is highly erotic, but it is never seedy or smutty. Yes, it is romantic, but it is never sickly or sweet.

If you enjoy European cinema then you're probably going to love this film. If you don't then you're probably best giving it a miss.

Julio Medem's "Room in Rome" is the tale of a Spanish lesbian who, one night in Rome, picks up a Russian girl who has never been with a woman before. At first the girl is nervous and after some foreplay in the lesbian's hotel room, she gets cold feet and sneaks away while the other girl is sleeping. But she has forgotten her mobile phone. She returns to the hotel room and knocks on the door. The other girl answers the door naked just as a waiter comes to deliver food to the room next door. She doesn't cover herself up but tells the waiter they may want some food later. And so begins a night of games, fantasies, laughter, love-making and the baring of souls as well as bodies.

Medem has created a film of rare beauty, intoxicating romanticism and scorching eroticism. The girls spend almost the entire film nude, the camera slowly panning over their warmly lit skin and lingering in loving close-up on the passion-lit faces. To a soundtrack of lush pop music and opera and amidst the classical paintings that cover the walls and comment on the action, the girls engage in games of fabricated identity, only gradually pealing off the layers of fantasy to reveal the often tragic secrets that have made them who they are.

It is perhaps ironic that a film about a relationship between two women should be one that drew me into its story more deeply than any romantic film I can remember, and yet I could identify with both and fell in love with both. What makes the film so powerful is not the sex, erotic as that is, but the by turns playful and compassionate interactions between the women. This is an open spontaneous encounter between two people which necessarily changes them, and it is one which captures the rich joy of life.

The film has the classical beauty of a film by Bertolucci or Visconti, but unlike their best films, which tend to look at the darker side of life, "Room in Rome" is ultimately, in spite of some powerful moments of angst, a feel-good movie.

The only previous Medem film I've seen was "Sex and Lucia" (2001) which is another favourite which also featured a supporting role by Elena Anaya, who plays the lesbian in this film. I look forward to catching up with more of the work of this talented Spanish filmmaker.

The film, first of all, has a superb music. Then it is filmed in a unique manner, intimate, full of intensity, the camera penetrates slowly into the core of the soul of the two female characters, two young women who fall in love with each other during a night in a hotel room in Rome. The two actresses, Elena Anaya and Natasha Yarovenko, shows not only their physical beauty, but a small part of the beauty of the human soul. It's a love story, very sensitive, it is not soft-porn. The most intense moment of the film is when Alba and Natacha are singing the Italian song "Volare" in the bathroom. Although all the action takes place only in that hotel room, the movie is not boring at all, can be seen with pleasure, and 2nd and 3rd time.

For those who live or have actually traveled to Italy; imagine you are walking towards the Rome Hilton (which was a very elegant and plush establishment, as I recall from so many years ago), or the Waldorf Estoria, for those not familiar with the aforementioned Italian high end hotel. You walk up to what appears to be a beautifully built and lavish edifice that echoes of history and prestige and as the doorman opens the door separating the outside from the inside, you realize as you take those first few steps that you've just walked into the lobby of a Motel 8, or any of those "budget inns" that while functional and serve their purpose, are a far cry from what you might have expected by looking at the exterior. That experience would be the best way to describe this film.

Everything from the title to the setting, to the cinematography and the two main characters, bespeaks of a grandeur to come. However, its never delivered, or even left at the door and what we are relegated to is not unlike the menu of a hotel lobby vending machine. All the staples are there; the clichéd and contrived desperation you might find in a first year film student's production; where they are so anxious to get their "message" across, even if there is no actual message. The dull and frequently over dramatized allusion of a passion that simply isn't convincing, as well as the dialogue that makes attempts at "art house" depth, but is actually closer to a 1970s Giallo b-grade script; where the characters hang on every sentence as if promising a clue of what's to come, but their empty words only end up being a painful and constant buildup to that which never does.

Now I didn't walk into this expecting it to be a soft-core sex film, nor was that what I was looking for. Which is fine, because its actually closer to feather-core and based on the remaining content of the film which simply put, consists of two fit and attractive women who remain predominately naked throughout the picture and unconvincingly attempt to make us believe in their increasing affection for one another, perhaps the former option would have been more successful for all parties involved.

The film tries. It tries to create a depth to two women who are essentially having little more than an overnight fling. It tries to deliver eroticism and sensuality. It tries to be something that (as one previous commenter mentions) "panders to an American audience," but it also tries to provide for those who might be looking for more high-end "accommodation." It tries and tries, but in the end when that hand is extended with its palm up and waiting, all I could manage to think was, "for THAT kind of service I could have done without the bags."

A Room in Rome is about as deep and interesting as hotel closet and left me feeling as satisfied as if I'd just checked into one.