This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
The film starts with a gay orgy, where we meet our man Santiago who has gone there for some connection but doesn't find it. He comes back home next day to his angry teenage daughter Laila. They have a playful but love hate relationship. She is mad because he didn't let her go to party and she gets back saying to him that the best thing in his life was his ex Luis but he let him go too. He suddenly decides to show up at Luis's house with his mother and daughter hoping to rekindle his relationship with Luis but instead creates. Ruckus and drama. We are not clearly told what went wrong but it seems the breakup had something to do with Santiago. This makes Laila very mad and she moves in with her boyfriend making the father very restless. Laila is the only one person he truly loves. Back in town Santiago is still depressed hoping to find peace in his mind. The daughter comes back home asking to go to Brazil to meet her estranged mother. Santiago agrees and goes with her. But drama follows both of them everywhere. He meets a gay coupe there and has an interesting time with them but just when he thinks he needs more they ask him to leave. Eventually a dejected Santiago is back home in Buenos Aires and he takes the difficult decision of agreeing to let go her daughter to Canada for further studies. He will be miserable and lonely and he knows it but he needs to do the right thing.
I have very mixed feelings about the film. The continued downward spiral of our protagonist hits hard (and to an extent even to some personal level), causing as much frustration and anger as it is empathy but it does start to get repetitive after a while. You can feel his loneliness and want fo love but you can also see he cannot help but mess things up. Is he clingy or indifferent or a combination in different circumstances, we don't know; but he has more issues than a normal person. Like his ex-wife says, he hasn't found peace in his mind. The father-daughter relationship presented in this film seems to me to be the most interesting of the plot, it presents everyday situations in a realistic way, and that mixture between love and anger, between care and abandonment, which arises from Santiago's self-destructive nature. The film has plenty of nudity and realism to sometimes make you even uncomfortable with the self destructive nature of our man, but we are all trying to understand each other all the time. In this case, our man Santiago has all kinds of issues and he will need serious help to live through those. I understand that every time things have to spelled out for audiences, because whatever the reason maybe, the focus here is on the mental health of Santiago which needs serious help. The film is not an easy watch and is not for everyone but it has a soul and something that's normally not addressed in gay films, loneliness and craving fo love especially when you go into your 40s. Watch it but be patient. (5.5/10)
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