La vida inmoral de la pareja ideal (2016)
Martina and Lucio meet again 25 years after their appasionate young romance.
Director:
Manolo CaroWriter:
Manolo CaroStars:
The story tells how Lucio and Martina, two young students met in the
early years of school. With an indescribable chemistry, they decide to
eat the world without imagining that fate and society have prepared a
surprise that will tear them apart forever.
Country:
MexicoLanguage:
SpanishRelease Date:
28 October 2016 (Mexico) See more »Also Known As:
Tales Of An Immoral Couple See more »Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
Color
A former couple’s chance meeting sets a masquerade in motion in a screwball comedy by Mexican writer-director Manolo Caro.
There are two narrative strands in the new rom-com
from Manolo Caro. In the main action, two 40-somethings go to farcical
lengths to deny their still-powerful feelings for each other. The second
thread explores their impetuous teenage romance. The former could stand
quite well without the other, but in Tales of an Immoral Couple (La vida inmoral de la pareja ideal),
Caro and his appealing cast strike a winning balance between the
familiar and the fresh. By turns ardent and absurd, the movie doesn’t
quite suspend disbelief but embraces it, to charming effect.
Finding its own, fluid pulse — with fine work by a trio
of editors — the pic’s push-pull nostalgia is fueled by pop music and
dance, as well as affection for San Miguel de Allende, the arts-centric
Mexican city where much of the action unfolds. Tonatiuh Martinez’s
widescreen lensing favors symmetrical compositions that emphasize the
story's comic artifice, with Fernanda Guerrero’s bright production
design putting its own stamp on the feature’s Almodovar Lite
sensibility.
Though they’re determined to prove otherwise, Martina
(Cecilia Suarez, excellent) and Lucio (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) have
essentially been waiting for each other for 25 years. Even after a
quarter-century, their bond is so intense that they instantly recognize
each other’s voices after only a few overheard words in the random store
where they cross paths. Flustered and smitten all over again, they both
invent marriages for themselves on the spot and then have to recruit
friends to play the invented parts during an upcoming night at the
theater.
With the lure of a year’s free rent, Martina gets her
tenant, Igor (Juan Pablo Medina), a depressed alcoholic writer, to play
her hubby, while Queta (Nina Rubin), the mouthy 9-year-old daughter of
her semiestranged sister, Beatriz (Mariana Trevino), is cast in the role
of her kid. Lucio’s pregnant friend Loles (a terrifically game Paz
Vega) eagerly digs into the chance to thesp out as his wife, but she and
her husband, Vicente (Andres Almeida), complicate the ruse with their
own secret.
The awkward fiction the grown-ups create, which
culminates in a sharply played, vivaciously silly dinner scene, is
intercut with the central duo’s memories of their love story. As the
teenage Martina and Lucio, Ximena Romo and Sebastian Aguirre give the
Catholic high schoolers’ connection an earnest, sensual curiosity. He
fearlessly joins the school’s otherwise-female ballet class in order to
be near her, and Caro’s zingy screenplay condenses the initial stages of
their friendship into a few breezy yet charged scenes.
The filmmaker treats the young couple’s drugs-and-sex
experimentation with refreshing respect, rather than sensationalism. At
the same time, he casts an ambivalent eye toward a couple of adults —
Martina’s dance teacher (Javier Jattin) and an erotic photographer
(Erendira Ibarra) — who become a part of their adventure. But the soapy
melodrama involving Martina’s best friend (Natasha Dupeyron) that
eventually tears the two apart doesn't have quite the intended impact.
It doesn’t so much enrich the present-day action as punctuate it.
The contrast between the moralistic and the open-minded that Caro
addresses in the memory sequences simply hasn’t the oomph of the adults’
folly, with its ridiculously emphatic rejection of sentiment. It’s the
deliriously silly grown-ups — written, directed and performed with such
fine-tuned friction — who are irresistible.
The movie is great in the genre but not good if I compare it to others.
7.5/10 genre
5/10 overall
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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