Dependencia sexual

While a lot of the time, I am a mainstream guy - who likes to watch known films with a lot of buzz and famous celebs, one in a while I take myself more seriously, and venture out to explore on foreign terrain. This time, I decided to listen to my gut feeling, and rent Sexual Dependency. While usually, Spanish-language films annoy me - the premise behind Sexual Dependency sounded interesting, especially to me - a guy who enjoys movies with sexual themes.

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie: when I started watching it, and the split screen appeared, with dramatic music in the background - I was a bit hesitant. I though "Well, there starts another tears-filled international drama". In edition, the split screen really confused me in the beginning, and I thought to myself "Where the hell should I look?". But after you get the deal with the filming, you learn to appreciate this work of art: the idea of different perspective to each scene is amazing! Whoever though of showing us this split world is a genius!

Another thing to like about this movie is the collection of people, whose stories interweave amongst each other. Even though some stories are more interesting and unique, and other are a bit more commercial and clichéd - the general picture is quite nice. The end of the movie is highly surprising, though weak, and a lot of ends don't create a tie - yet still, you feel fulfilled after you watch this film.

While it is not perfect, it falls quite closely - thanks to an interesting plot construction, amazing filming, and even a little bit of South American music can't hurt.

If you're into unique work of cinematic art - especially international film fans - you cannot afford to miss this creation.

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

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.

With generosity and patience one could appreciate this movie. However, the director's choice of using split screens throughout is an overwhelming mistake that gets in the way of everything else he is trying to do. It becomes annoying, like receiving text totally underlined and in capital letters: not everything is equally important nor do the images on one side of the screen contribute continuously in any significant way to what happens on the other side nor enhance our grasp of the whole. So, we are regretfully left with a boring and pretentious conceit of the sort that should have been outgrown in film school. Rodrigo Bellott is nowhere near being a Peter Greenaway who can manipulate aspect ratios and split screens to profound dramatic effect, thereby creating effective, well-structured wholes (e.g. The Pillow Book, a film only done full justice on a theatre screen where the diverse aspect ratios which occur throughout the film can be shown.... DVD's can't do it).

Better luck next time.... and I truly hope there is a next time for Mr. Bellott. Forcing oneself to ignore his unfortunate aesthetic choice (and this is hard, for there is no avoiding it for the whole frigging movie) one realizes that Mr. Bellott may indeed have something worthwhile to say. I wish him to try again, preferably with a strong, experienced but sensitive producer at his side.

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