Chaotique Ana

I have been lucky to see Julio Medem's films at several film festivals over the years and he always manages to captivate his audience. I was fortunate enough to attend the UK premiere of his new masterpiece Caotica Ana at the London Film Fstival recently. He is arguably one of Spain's all time most important film makers, for example Stanley Kubrick said that Medem's "The Red Squirrel" was one of his all time favourite films and Steven Spielberg offered Medem the chance to direct "Zorro", which he later turned down to spend more time developing his own movies.

Caotica Ana is one of Medem's best films to date, beautifully filmed, beautifully acted and with an intensely captivating story of reincarnation and never ending love. Manuela Velles as Ana is enchanting and lights up the screen, Charlotte Rampling turns in a good performance in her first ever Spanish speaking role, Bebe provides much laughter and Asier Newman is simply hypnotic, exuding vulnerability and charisma. Sequences are at times "Chaotic" as per the title but are necessary to build emotional attachment to the story. The change between chaos and calm being personified in many ways through Ana's final journey to New York by boat, travelling on stormy and more tranquil waters. Overall a must see movie, very different to anything you have ever seen before and a real homage to the importance of women in society throughout the ages.

Many people said that "Caotica Ana" had sunk in its own chaos. Well, I don't demand from films a straightforward narrative, I think that the stream of consciousness, the poetic, the surrealistic can be much more powerful, emotional, than a story told in conventional fashion. I've liked a lot "Lucia y el sexo" - It was so beautiful that it took my breath away, and when I tried to write about it in IMDb I just couldn't.

Now, "Caotica Ana" .... as a whole it's a mess. In his homage to his sister Ana, Julio Medem invokes the sea, the sun, reincarnation, the tragedy of Western Sahara etc... Many different ingredients were put into this soup, but in what concerns the taste... Some scenes are beautiful and moving, but other scenes feel like nothing. The film is like a mind game (from reason, through reason, to Emotion) - many situations and elements seem to have been arbitrarily inserted.

I don't care so much for logic and I was expecting with "Caotica Ana" an audio-visual-emotional trip (the beautiful Ana in different times and places, the sea, the sky. What could possibly go wrong?), but I was disappointed in this regard. Anyway "Caotica Ana" is a very personal film. It's different from anything you may find in your local DVD rental store. Give it a try if you want.

Having now seen all six of Medem's DVDs in his Spanish released "Collection", I was worried that this last one, would be rubbish. Other reviews and reviewers hint at such but I found it utterly intense and mesmerising.

Anyone having seen more than one of Julio's films knows that logic often disappears and an adult fantasy awaits. Beautiful sexuality, strange and exotic visuals, stunning landscapes and a chequerboard of interlocking story pieces that sometimes sort of connect. I loved not knowing what was going to happen next, or who Ana's next incarnation was going to be.

Instead of trying to make sense of it all, just light a candle of two, turn out the lights and let it overwhelm you. This is a director of immense imagination and he has the guts to follow them through and onto film. The ravishing paintings done by his late sister alone are worth seeing.

Here in the U.K., I've not seen any of the regular actors of Medem's in any other director's films. So, it was nice to see the reassuring maturity of Charlotte Rampling and her character as the Patron of the Arts that takes Ana under her wing perfect for her and she plays it superbly, of course.

Chaotic Ana isn't my favourite Medem flick, The Red Squirrel is. All his films are quite long and meandering and it is this unpredictability and superb visual tapestry that makes me rate him so highly.

This movie feels like a passionate dance, full of emotion, adventure, highs and lows, life and death, love and abandonment. It is about hypnosis and the past lives of the main character Ana. It is about the masculine and feminine. About war and violence, sexuality and love. A unique and artistic movie, I love it.

The last scene was a bit weird for me, but I think it is not a scene to take literally, but with a deeper, almost archetypical meaning.

Ana feels somewhat archetypical to me, like the sensual, passionate, free, open feminine. Really good actress, I love her facilial expressions, her deep emotions, the way she looks and how free-spirited she is.

After the wonderful "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" and his masterpiece "Sex and Lucia" (the last almost seven years ago) my expectations on Julio Medem's follow up movie were very high and for that reason I rushed to see "CAOTIC ANA" at the Toronto Film Festival. To my disappointment, this movie is just as its title CAOTIC. A sad demonstration that some interesting or even original ideas by no means end up as a good movie.

Ana is a young painter living in IBIZA with his widow father. One day she meets Justine (the great Charlotte Rampling) who offers education and economic support to perfect her artistic skills if she moves to Madrid. Ana starts "feeling" the big city and the new life (it is a sensorial feeling; she is be far from shy or at least she has no problems in being nude for art's sake or to take a bath in the ocean or for many other reasons). One of her new "feelings" is Said; a young Arab and fellow student which Ana gets involved and obsessive in love (like Lucia in "Sex"). In short time, Ana starts having strange daydreams and seizures until a professional hypnotist finds out she had lived many previous lives and all of them ending with terrible deaths at a very young age (around 22 years old). This discovery plus something said by Ana (she speaks different languages while hypnotized) causes Said to run away without any explanation. In order find out what happened with Said she accepts being part of a hypnotic treatment, trying to investigate her previous lives (and deaths). The only condition, she does not want to remember anything about the session, unless is related to Said. Many more things occur and for reasons that do not make a lot of sense she ends up in USA where she is submitted to the last "session" to find out the truth. Even when the idea looks interesting; the unrealistic chain of events, many of them too forced, harms the narrative. No character in the movie (which includes very well known European actors like Rampling or Luis Homar) has any deep or definition. They are mostly pieces put there to generate a situation or a dialog; we do not get to properly know Ana since her only motivation seems to be finding Said; and even this mystery (which drives the movie ) is easily predictable. Medem (like Bergman in his own way) has a personal concept about love and human relations and all his movies make reference to the stupid choices and things people do and consequences in everybody's lives. He never really made a lineal or realistic story; just a chain of events aligned to show his theory. This concept worked fine in previous movies; because in some way everything (albeit not always logically) got connected and made sense; which is not the case here. Many ideas seem to be thrown in the mix (not all of them really good or original) but like water and oil did not blend at all. Cohesion is missing in many moments (like the missing reels in GRINDHOUSE). The perfect example is the scene with the USA government functionary; a scene many people will probably enjoy (aside for the disgusting) but has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It is really sad because technically the movie is excellent; the paintings and the animations are outstanding, the locations are pure beauty but while Ana had many souls, this movie has none.