No mires para abajo

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 is one of those films which you will watch either because of the sex scenes it contains or because you want a good Spanish speaking film with readable English sub-titles - or both. What you get in fact is an underrated emotional comedy which has all the sex you might want to watch for curiosity sake while using it as a lesson to brush up on your Spanish.

My wife and I were very taken with the film, it was nice to watch together. Yes it is a sort of Kama Sutra movie, but the film is artistically directed and the storyline, although not reaching Hollywood heights, will tickle and tease you with delight, and I am not talking about the sex scenes in that reference.

Here is a film carrying a double meaning, a young boy who has been taught by his Father to walk on stilts, so he looks down on people in an amusing way. Not only that, as a sleepwalker, he has an uncanny ability to see the dead 'alive' each morning, this is all very touching in a young man who is setting out on a life of sexual exploration.

I found this film on DVD by accident. I am always glad to watch a foreign language movie and especially one in Spanish. An Argentinian movie is a rare treat. Something as sexually evocative and artistic as this IS a rare treat indeed. There is hardly any nudity in movies of current release nowadays and when there is, it is hardly done in an artistic way.

There are some great expressions and some really funny moments. The story is somewhat thin at times but that matters not to the overall enjoyment of the movie.

Here we have a movie with artistic credibility, no bad language, no violence, a movie which is just a pleasure to watch.

This film has a low rating by the users here. Lower than some really bad films that are more popular. It is a very magical coming of age film which deals with sexual knowledge and its relationship to the mysteries of life and the balancing of the spirit. It is told with sensitivity and some humor. It is quite erotic but short of being explicit. I think many young men in particular would benefit from seeing a film where a woman is so respected, where the woman is the teacher and the wise one. Men should see this film and imagine they should be so lucky. It is not perfect, but it is quite charming and makes very important statements about the higher consciousness of sexuality and affection....in particular for young people.

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.

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.