Leap Year

Monica del Carmen is Laura Velez, a journalist living alone in an apartment in Mexico. She spends most of her time there writing her stories or cooking for herself.

She also picks up strangers for one night stands much like Diane Keaton in "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" years ago. Del Carmen is short, overweight and plain looking but she does an admirable job portraying a lonely young woman searching for something or someone, we're never quite sure what she wants or needs.

The sex scenes are somewhat explicit for a mainstream movie, so if you are offended by such material, stay away.

This is a technically simple story mostly shot in the apartment where Laura lives. He final partner has a sadistic streak, so be forewarned of some degrading behavior which is fairly unpleasant. That being said, I would like to see what Ms. del Carmen does in the future.

This is a frustrating film to watch because it is extremely claustrophobic. After the opening scene, the entire film takes place inside a small apartment. There is little by way of plot. There are many scenes of the young woman talking on the phone with her mother and brother. She also gets visits from her brother. Mostly, however, she gets visited by a man who started as a one night pickup, but the pair starts developing a sado-masochistic relationship that becomes increasingly disturbing. This is an impressive film debut for writer-director Rowe, who favors long takes and a stationary camera, an approach that is effective in conveying the loneliness of the protagonist.

Laura's character is so complex. We see her living a superfluous life when she interacts with other characters, except for her brother Raul and a guy named Arturo. We descend to the darkest levels of the human psyche along with the main character and that exploration is highly successful by the director. The film is linear, with no jumps in time as does Inarritu or Guillermo Arriaga, and also includes sex scenes which are pretty explicit. Although it seems the movie is just porn, it goes beyond sex. The aesthetic is like simple and I think the merit of the movie is the story and how it show us the life of a lonely woman living on a big city. So, after painful and rough journey, perhaps it is possible to find hope and redemption. A great Mexican film.

Leap year is the story of the encounter or rather the break up of Laura and Arturo. Apparently this is a simple story but it contains a lot of details worth taking a second look at. The Australian director and screenwriter who lives in Mexico submerges us in a visual world that is plain and charmless for Mexican standards and someone might be tempted to judge the film by its visual austerity. But this perspective allows Michael Rowe to explore the solitude of Laura, her detachment from others and to slowly introduce us into her adventures with man, what she searches in them or better said who she would like to encounter in them. After seeing the film a close friend told me it was anti Hollywood. Definitely it does not embody a mass market aesthetic. The dark skinned actors and the unappetizing looks of the apartment where the action takes place are ideal to center the attention of the spectator on what is happening to the main character. Scenes like Laura taking off her bra underneath her shirt, picking her nose while working on her computer submerge us into an uncomfortable bodily intimacy. And there are also the very explicit sex scenes with exquisite violence full of details I don't even feel free to mention here that are not exciting in the usual sense but awaken a deep curiosity for the character. This movie was not shown in the Mexican commercial circuit. What does it mean when society that not willing to see herself in the mirror. When Michelangelo Antonioni answered critics of his movie The adventure (1960) he used these words "Eros is sick, man is uncomfortable and this makes him react but he does so in the wrong way, he explores eroticism and he is unhappy".

Watched this last night with my wife and we both agreed it is perhaps the most accurate depiction of modern life of young adulthood that either of us have ever seen. This film is to that lonely time of self discovery in the mid to late 20's that Apocaplyse Now is to the Vietnam War. Not only is the depiction of sex graphic and frank but it isn't sexy. And there is about the best explanation for U.S. Mexico relations -and the Mexican gov. in general (or lack thereof)- in this film that I have ever heard: i.e. the monetization of security. If you have seen and liked the films of Carlos Reygadas, Fernando Eimbcke and Arturo Ripstein then you will understand the type of aesthetic at work here. If on the other hand your idea of Mexican cinema is Vicente Fernandez or the Santos lucha libre films you are in for a rude awakening.