Dependência Sexual

This is not an easy movie to watch. Not only is the topic rather heavy, but the way the director shows the images is in the beginning very disturbing and tiresome: you constantly see two images at the same time, like the screen is split in a left and a right half! Sometimes it's two totally different images from two different story-lines, at other times it's just two different camera-angles of the same going-ons. At first I thought it would eventually turn to one image, or it would just get split-up again when there was some specific reason for it. But when it dawned on me that this would go on throughout the whole 105 minutes, it almost made me turn the thing off. Luckily I didn't, because gradually your eyes and brain apparently get used to this, and I have to say: the movie itself is really good!! It was advertised on my DVD-box as some sort of sequel to Kids or Ken Park movie, which I think doesn't justify it. Sure, it's got the same sense of documentary, young actors going about as if they're not acting at all, and camera's wavering about, and it's as candid in the way the different stories are told and shown. But it's a lot less superficial, you seem to get more into the characters of the persons, which at least enables you a little bit to comiserate and care for them. It's about some 5 young kids who all have reasons for frustrated feelings about sex and sexuality. Some in a very simple way, like the young village-girl with the raving strict father, who's dying for her first experience. Or the young virgin guy who gets forced by his drunk and roaring friends to visit a prostitute. In others it's more complicated: hidden homosexual feelings in a macho latino, or coping with the experience of a rape. The different story lines are cleverly woven into eachother, in a very natural way (witch is helped of course by the splitting of the screen) and somehow I didn't even notice it much when the story brought us to a Spanish or an American spoken scene. Of course you're not to expect any happy ending with this kind of bare, painfully honest movies, and the one here is equally depressing, just giving you the hope that everyone will somehow have learned something from his or her bad experiences. Maybe that's my main criticism: there's very little room for a smile, it's maybe all a bit too pitch-black. However: absolutely worth while. 8 out of 10.

it is one of the best movies i've ever seen, first of all because i saw it in a movie theater in Cochabamba Boliva, i am from Bolivia and i lived in a everyday basis watching how everything is just as the movie portrays it, not only the split screen factor is a new thing in the style of the movie, but the way of mixing two places that differ so much from one another and still teenagers have the same problems, it doesn't matter who you are where you live you can always relate yourself to the movie, i saw it and i could only think of how much truth the director poured into the movie. Finally I would like to add that not only the plot but the way the story is told gives it more dramatism and realism, it is just incredible that something of that quality was produced in my country I feel really proud to see that the international market is ready to see what Bolivia has to offer in art material

This movie is very good. A bunch of reasons make me say this. First of all, I am a person who has been around many countries in South America (i.e. Latin America) and I can very well relate everything that this movie showed. The movie is based on a reality that Bolivia, specially Santa Cruz (the city), lives day by day. This reality shows how people think, and how very small societies can play important and determinant roles in people's way of thinking, way of acting, and even sexuality (title of the movie.) The split screen is a very good effect. I have to admit that it is weird at the beginning, b/c first of all i have never watched a movie like that--with a split screen--and i am pretty sure many people haven't either. After 10 to 15 minutes you start to realize why the director did this, and you start to understand how he focus different things, at different times, for different purposes. Its just like real life; you just don't go around looking for one thing at a time, the effect of multi-focusing gives the movie a special taste, and most importantly, it gives the movie a very realistic taste. The movie ending is one of the best ones that i have seen in my entire life, totally unexpected, totally shocking, and makes you think about every single thing that you saw in the movie. I would strongly recommend it. Trust me, just see it, with an open mind, and you will like it. 10/10

Sexual Dependency is an interesting movie, very different from the movies produced in Hollywood. However I agree with the user commenting that "it could have been a good movie". Unfortunately it has many deficiencies. One of the biggest one is that the small little stories are quite scarce and non-realistic, e.g. the first one and the last one. I don't understand the director/writer why he changed the location of the last scene... Why did he move the story from Bolivia to USA? This gave me the impression that the stories are completely different and they won't have any meeting point, or anything in common (then at the end it turns out they have). The filming technique is also quite tiresome. You see two screens, sometime having completely different action in one than in the other. And as the movie is shot is Spanish, you have to keep an eye on the subtitle. So it's really hard and tiring to follow both screens. Sometimes I had the feeling that I'm bored, at some point (after the second scene) I thought I should stop watching the movie.

There are some movies you start watching with "oh what now?!" and at the end you thank the Providence you did...

I avoid describing formal part - it's something you can discuss for long if you like after the movie and maybe it makes you watch it again "to fully understand". Whatever. Don't forget a wonderful selection of the music - at least for this reason the movie is something to see for those who are not interested for the other reasons.

The importance for me consists in a topic. Let's say it simply - the mentality of a straight-male world. "Oh, they are not all the same." Of course, we talk about those who are. About the chronical misunderstanding between genders - "marry me, let's make children, build a house,..." and the other gender, that learned that "I love you!" is a good way to say "I wanna f..k you" without offending the romantic ideals of the other one. I am not a frustrated woman whose feelings were hurt. I am a gay man - who just watches this never-ending game as a third part (with insight to both sides) and has "fun". Sometimes not so funny-kind-of-fun.

I'd relate it to a movie In The Company Of Men - that was told "to divide times" to Before and After. May it be so. Now perhaps again, from different continent(s) - and with more characters to watch (maybe in different times) - so the image we are served is to be much more "universal"-like. But - it's not Bolivia, it's not America - this is the slight touch to the general mentality what the masculine thinks about what their masculinity is. That men never grow up inside from the age of 15...? They are the hunters in the core? They are expected to be so? What you think? At least consider...

And now time for the point - the movie is a precise composition of the images that will be burnt in your head like a CD. And if not the scenes, not the dialogs, then for sure all the feelings and tunings and small internal shame you'll experience. One of the reasons to recommend this movie is the one mentioned in the title - for me it took days to digest it - even if my opinion was similar before. It HAS A TASTE - maybe bitter - but it's more then nowadays you can expect from the other politically correct and all-is-nice or all-will-be-OK films.

Enjoy it, first feel, then think, admit, then the change will come itself. Let's hope.