david_luengo

An aged woman who needs to fulfill a sexual fantasy she has writes an advertisement in a contact magazine. When a younger man answers the advertisement, they start up a sexual relationship (pornographic as she calls it, because that's what pornography is, just sex and nothing else) based on the fulfillment of her fantasy. However, the initially sexual relationship becomes more complicated when they become sentimentally involved and start liking each other.

"Une liaison pornographique" is an honest and pure movie about love, sex and human relations, which lacks all the usual paraphernalia, ornament and romanticism. I liked specially the initial scene, when the camera shows an unfocused view of the crowd, with faces that come and go, never staying too much time. This scene made me think of how modern life is in the cities, where we seem to be bees in a giant beehive, simply passing through life without any purpose at all. From this scene on the film shows how difficult it is to maintain a relationship based on something so natural as sex between two adult, responsible and free people. The film also shows how feelings may interfere and complicate human relationships, and how easy it is to misunderstand each other's feelings.

Although the title may suggest otherwise, the film advances mainly through the conversations of the two starring characters previously to the sexual encounters that take place in a little hotel's room. Sex is shown only when it is strictly necessary and in a delicate way (the spectators never get to know what her fantasy is, since the camera lingers through the hotel's corridors during the act), so people looking for explicit sex will be deceived. The performance of Nathalie Baye, and Sergi Lopez is convincing as two ordinary people with sexual and emotional needs, succeeding in involucrating the spectator in their private universe. In conclusion, a movie that is worth seeing.

Betty is a waitress in a little town's bar who is married to a car seller, but who is secretly in love with a TV series actor who plays a surgeon. The night of her birthday she is at home watching a recorded chapter of her favourite series, when two assassins murder her husband in their own house because of a drug affair. The shock causes her to confuse fantasy and reality, making her believe she is a real nurse and that the hospital displayed in the TV series is real. Therefore she abandons her husband (or at least that is what she believes) and goes to California to meet the surgeon (whom she believes to have been her boyfriend once). Meanwhile the two assassins are looking for her and the drug her husband had stolen them. In spite of being quite a tragical story, all the movie is related in a tone of comedy and from a kind point of view, that makes the spectator feel fine once the movie is over, having spent a good time watching it.

"The road home" is the road a dead professor's coffin must go through from the hospital in town, to the little lost village in the chinese mountains where he had been teaching during 40 years, and where he will be buried. It is also the story of the return of the teacher's universitary son to his native village after an absence of several years. But, above all, the film shows the beautiful and unconventional love story that the dead teacher and a girl from the village, whom he married later, live. The story is remembered by the son as their parents told him, and is shown in colour, contrasting with the images of the present time, which are displayed in black and white. This choice helps to highlight the love story and reinforce it in comparison with the grey present (the funeral takes place in the middle of the winter), showing how vivid the past may still be when remembering crucial times in our lives many years after they have occurred. The story is filmed with a lot of sensitivity and great attention paid to the details, the actors are wonderful (Ziyi Zhang is simply lovely), the photography is marvellous, displaying grandiose autumn and winter landscapes, and the music contributes to create a nostalgic atmosphere. If you are expecting a reivindicative movie by Yimou, you will certainly be disappointed, but if you want to see an honest and beautiful love story, and learn a little about the habits and traditions of the chinese culture, this movie is definitely a must see.