No mires para abajo

The story is just really weird. This movie tries to be super artsy on all fronts but that's really all there is to it. Thus, the end project feels like a very exotic art school project.

If you are looing for romance in a movie, this one sorely disappoints. It's hard to think romance when the scene flips to dead men sitting in a cemetary. This kind of flip from romance to death related scenes basically describes the whole movie, quite the let down.

If you want to watch it for the adult nature, there's far better adult movies around the same intimate theme.

The storyline is completely polluted with death. The leads talk about it constantly, there's dead men chilling in the cemetary between each scene, there's headstone engraving, a father dying after burning love letters from an affair he had, and more talking about death. It's overkill, even for a school art project. The filmmakers use this theme to try to be artsy and risqué but without an actual story that makes sense, it's just a collection of weirdness as it combines with the sex scenes.

In short, this movie:

• fails as a romantic movie
• fails as an erotic movie
• fails as an artsy movie
• fails as a fantasy movie

It's a erotic cemetary fantasy gone wrong; it's just weird on every level.

Eliseo Subiela has that rare quality of seeing magic in reality, of portraying it in his movies with freshness and philosophical depth. His characters, despite being normal, are in a special kind of reality, and their interaction with our world is always eccentric and quirky. Subiela is true to himself in the premise of the movie, as it departs from a quote from a poem by Andre Breton that intrinsically links live, love and death and considers physical love as a redemptive element in life.

The movie revolves about the sexual awakening of Eloy, a sweet and absent-minded teenager, apprentice of electrician and courier boy to the nearby cemetery, who starts sleepwalking after the death of his father and ends in the arms of a sassy and older neighbor, Elvira, who will teach him how to satisfy a woman and himself.

If you want to make a movie about tantric sex and sexual initiation you need two basic elements. Firstly, a couple of sensual actors who have chemistry on camera and are able to transmit eroticism to the spectator, so that we can believe that they are having sex and enjoying it. Secondly, to create the right atmosphere and mood so the sex scenes look natural and passionate. All of that was missing from the movie, despite sex being the main subject of the movie. The scenes look unnatural, forced, like a rehearsal. They are shot with constriction, without passion and with some visual bigotry, despite the intention of the movie being quite the opposite. It felt like those modern Kamasutra books with photos of nude couples posing in the different sexual positions - Boring and not erotic. It would have been better, perhaps, showing less, and leaving more to the imagination, which always gives great results.

The most memorable moments of the movie are, however, those few in which the movie distracts itself from sex and portrays reality in Eloy's eyes and part of the family's story. The happy eeriness of Eloy's trips to the cemetery on his bike to deliver tablets are wonderfully photographed and shot, the natural interaction between the deceased and those alive are those more closely connected to Breton's initial poem and Subiela's style. Here we see the always charming Subiela in action, focusing on what he does best.

Regarding the acting, I found Leandro Stivelman good and believable in his portray of the sweet and dreamy Eloy, and also Hugo Arana in his short role as Eloy's deceased father. I did not find Antonella Costa believable at all in her portray of Elvira, neither in the sex scenes or in the talking ones. Perhaps because the script does not give much information about her, and the one that gives does not help the viewer to understand her. On the other hand, she does not have the sensuality or acting maturity necessaries to affront a role like this. The rest of the actors are OK in their respective roles.

Glimpses of the best Subiela are wasted by a rather mediocre and un-erotic movie with a very weak script

This movie was very interesting. The love of the father for his son, the love of the son for his father. The music in the movie is very good. I love the scene where the nana dances as the same time as Elvira dances for Eloy. A beautiful movie. Even tough it is suppose to have been made from a tao manual, I feel it turned out to be very philosophical. I enjoyed it immensely. It was erotic and I am sure it depicts a lot of the journey for tantric student. The actors are beautiful. The decor are enchanting. The music is appropriate. The dead father finally "living" his life is a glimor of hope for the afterlife. The best line ever: In life you will always be saying goodbye – don't let that stop you from loving.".

The fact that a beautiful film like No mires para abajo receives a rating as low as this can only mean that most people simply cannot look past the explicit depiction of sex and nudity on film. It's a shame, because aside from being quite erotic, it's actually a beautiful and sensitive film, a piece of magical realism in the finest tradition of South American authors like Márquez and Borges, and it deals with the organic and spiritual links between life, death and sexuality with no attempt to create controversy or to arouse in the usual sense, but rather to create an atmosphere of magical, dreamy bliss.

To be fair, No mires para abajo gives only a glimpse into the dreamworld it describes; the film is very short, very small in scope, and it probably wouldn't have worked had it been longer - it's an image, rather than a complete story. The two main characters are intriguing, lovable and mysterious, but neither one is a full and complex character. But for what it is, it works beautifully. It's not a story with a beginning, a middle and an end; there's no arc, or character development, or conflict. It's just a beautiful short glimpse into a more beautiful side of our reality, and if you can look past the sex and nudity and enjoy it for what it is, it's highly recommended. It won't be to everybody's taste, to be sure, but it should never be dismissed as softcore porn.

I'm sort of sad to be a part of this party, but like another reviewer said, this piece of French handiwork received a low rating. But like Meatloaf said after a night of busting helmets on the gridiron "I guess they didn't understand". Know what's funny? I rented this movie for the sex. Soft core is the wrong word to describe what I just saw, completely. I don't mean to become more caustic here, but it made me understand what people here enjoy about the glossies, you know the ones in the bags that Junior can't buy or look at. "Don't Look Down" was artistic and genuine. I was completely drawn toward Antonella Costa. She was innocent in an odd way, with the mystique of both a nymph and satyr.Actually, she was a woman with much knowledge about pleasure. The actress needed the body for the part, for all the parts. Why I was so entranced by a film about kama sutra, and a relationship between two French lovers is just beyond me. Because it all meshed, and subtitles I could have foregone and still understood most. The man had a very serious sleep disturbances. Becoming involved with this woman was his redemption. It was not just ordinary physical passion. He learned an art from her. He himself knew things, and soon the two of them were walking with their heads in the treetops. Some of the movie was pure fantasy, probably. Among American audiences that might be a turn-off. But a lot of people don't have the patience to watch films with subtitles. To see fantasy in a good movie, you pick out a fantasy, you know like Doctor Doolittle or Spacebusters. I feel like some day we are going to go to a computer and create our own movies, that have Genre No.1, PGH-135-1, use these preservatives, as it were, in a recipe. Where would the story be, the characters? I like foreign movies, but my viewing pleasure of this film goes beyond any genre assimilation. Foreign movies are very simple..I think that's how the actors find a chance to be characters in a movie. A lot happens, but there is not a lot of crypticism and the drive to embarrass. Although snubbed by any possible combination of American movie critics, Leandro Stivelman and Antonello Costa had a great story and a beautiful soundtrack. It's not what we go for over here, I'm not sure why.Maybe they should have processed the movie through Panaflex. It did not have real fruity colors.