Année bissextile

A bleak study of loneliness set in a claustrophobic apartment in Mexico City featuring a fearless performance, or a masochistic one, take your pick, by Monica Del Carmen as Laura. Laura spends most of her days and nights in her joyless apartment spying on her neighbors and inventing relationships with them in her mind. She occasionally goes out to clubs and brings home men for unrewarding sex. They invariably leave her lonelier than before. She meets Arturo (Armando Hernandez) who brings a sado-masochistic satisfaction to her sexual life. Meanwhile she ominously checks off the dates of her calendar toward the end of the month marked in red. This film is as explicit as it needs to be and Laura's world is not easy to view. Director Michael Rowe has achieved the film he sat out to make, I'm sure, and the totality of the realism can be uncomfortable as it should be. By setting the movie entirely in the small apartment and by the astonishingly natural performance of Ms. Del Carmen, you feel, smell, and know this movie like it was a fever dream. You want to give Laura a big hug at the end. Not for the squeamish or near squeamish.

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.

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 film was, at first sight, a turn off. The protagonist at first seems like a self indulgent loser. The camera remained still and the action, such as it was, took place entirely in a tiny dark apartment. The girl never leaves home except off camera. But viewed as a tragedy this makes sense. The action moving only by visitors, the single setting and the simple themes all add up to create a classic world of claustrophobia and sadness. The sex is honestly portrayed as empty. Unlike Hollywood moves which tend to glamorize sordid situations, in this film the sex scenes are depressing rather than titillating.

As the story plods along we begin to realize that the girl's apparent victim relationship with a sadist has an underlying motive. She needs him to help her reach a goal. ( shades of "a Taste of Cherries") Her conversations with her sexual partners are limited. She seems totally uninterested in her lovers and we could judge her as selfish until we see how she cares about her brother and how she lives vicariously through her neighbours. Despite themes of self destruction, abuse, lying, empty sex and loneliness, the film eventually includes a ray of optimism or art least a possibility of another life. I did understand why some reviewers were put off but I appreciated it rather then enjoyed it.