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Al Mar (Spanish) [The Sea]

By Golu
This movie was just plain weird. I really went in wanting to like it, but the whole pretentious, overly poetic vibe, combined with this choppy editing that keeps hopping back and forth in these tiny five to ten second bursts, just made it feel dragged out for no real reason, way too self indulgent if you ask me. Honestly this could've been trimmed down to a fifteen minute short and lost nothing. And I still don't get what the deal was with women dancing along the beach while some overwrought, flowery narration plays over the top. The plot creeps along at a snail's pace, slowly building toward some confrontation that you can see coming from a mile away and that just gets duller the closer it gets. By the time it actually happened I'd totally checked out as a viewer, even with two genuinely good looking guys leading the film. The setup itself is pretty basic. Lorena and Diego are trying to settle into a new life in a small town by the coast, both nervously starting fresh ...
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Parque de Diversões (Portuguese) [Amusement Park]

By Golu

When I read the summary about anonymous figures wandering the streets looking for hookups until one of them slips past the locked gate of a city park to wander its trails, I got curious and figured this might turn into some kind of erotic mystery. Turns out that one line basically sums up the entire runtime. This whole movie is just one single night of gay cruising inside an amusement park, broken up entirely by glances exchanged and bodies coming together. One guy locks eyes with another somewhere on a path, and pretty soon they're tangled up together among the trees and fences. The film bounces between something like fifteen or twenty different men, almost nobody speaks a word, and basically the entire runtime is just these guys cruising and hooking up around the park.

Given the subject matter, yeah, this gets explicit, exactly what you'd expect. I kept asking myself, and honestly I'm still asking, whether this is meant to be actual porn or some kind of legitimate art film. I genuinely can't tell you which. The cruising sequences are filmed with this sense of sensuality and mystery hanging over them, like at any moment someone's going to get caught or some outsider's going to crash the whole thing, except that moment never comes, it's just pleasure the whole way through. Nobody treats anybody badly here. It plays like an observational piece, with the camera drifting between tight close-ups and wider shots pulled back. It never passes judgment, just watches everything honestly while still keeping a certain discretion about it. Strange little connections form throughout, sometimes through sex, sometimes through conversations you wouldn't expect. One of the best moments in the whole film is this detailed retelling of a hookup between two strangers, told out loud to a blind man. The director doesn't shy away from raw sex or pleasure at all, playing around with fantasy and fetish almost playfully.

Honestly, what was the actual goal here, what was the director even trying to say with this? I have no clue, and I doubt anyone else does either. There's got to be some reason behind it, otherwise why stage all this primal gay sex against the backdrop of a supposedly family friendly amusement park. As a piece of filmmaking, this was just flat out boring. (2/10)

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