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Leo's Room
Leo, a young man coming to terms with his own sexuality, runs into Caro, a primary school friend he fancied when they were kids, who's now trying to ward off her own personal demons. This casual re-encounter will affect their personal conflicts without either truly grasping the other's problem.
Release : | 2010 |
Rating : | 6.5 |
Studio : | Lavorágine Films, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Makeup Artist, |
Cast : | Martín Rodríguez Cecilia Cósero Arturo Goetz Mirella Pascual Rafael Soliwoda |
Genre : | Drama Romance |
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Reviews
Why so much hype?
Highly Overrated But Still Good
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Like other reviewers I was really sucked in and thoroughly enjoyed the first 80% or more, but then it seemed to lose itself slightly.I don't want to spoil it for anyone so I won't go into detail. It is just a shame the director couldn't have continued with the same attention to detail and intrigue that was so evident in the first hour or so of the movie.I would have to disagree with other reviewers regarding Caro. Some felt she was totally unnecessary, but for me she was essential to the story. At the point she entered the story there was a similarity between Leo and her, i.e. they both had unresolved issues. This for me added an extra dimension to the movie, which meant it transcended the usual coming of age / coming out of the closet flick.Where I would agree, as far as Caro is concerned, is that this story arc was not resolved in a way that made it as integral to the overall protagonist's journey as it could have been.To be honest, had I rated it after 85% I would probably have given it a 9, but the last 15% just didn't do it for me. Maybe after a few days reflection I might feel differently.All of that said, I would still recommend it as there is so much to like about and so many interesting characters.
The choice that Leo seemed to make at the end made no sense based on the first hour of the movie. I think the writer did not want to offend the movie critics or general public, but as a gay man, this never would have happened. Disappointed in the simplistic ending. So what was the point of the psychiatrist then? The beginning of the film does not match at all with the end. He is right back where he started and in the future will be having the same feelings and behaviors he was hiding from. You just cant turn off your sexuality that simply. It is too bad since the movie held me closely until near the end then seemed corny. I felt like I had wasted my time.
This is an absolutely first rate film from beginning to end. It grabs you and never lets go. You become completely wrapped up in the story and the characters and you really care about what happens to them and what is happening in general. The cast is perfect and probably the biggest secret to film success is successful casting and this film has it in spades. The ending, which apparently some here do not care for is carefully worked out if you pay attention to the clues that crop up on the way to the ending. There are definite signs in the road that lead you to only one conclusion which will in the end make everyone happy. I won't give it away because that would be a spoiler but one thing I will say is that I was shocked this gem of a film came from a Latin American country so remote I didn't even know it existed, but that's what makes film so exciting because even the least known places on the planet can make a name for themselves in the international film market and this film definitely does that.
They say that avocados are an acquire taste, the same we can say about this type of movies. The slow timing, the great length of the scenes with a lot of silences, very scarce dialog, the favorite way to make movies by Ingmar Bergman, by Antonioni... you really have to accept those premises if you decide to watch this film.It has a great deal of excellence thanks to everybody involved in it, since obviously they filmed it with a very restricted budget. It seems the lighting they used was the natural ambiance light and if the scene came out too dark, too bad, no way they would re shoot it, but exactly those no-no's (for a Hollywood production) helped in this case to get the necessary atmosphere to develop the story with great intimacy and naturalness. It was filmed, practically, as a documentary.All the actors were true professionals, save, maybe, the mother of the protagonist, that for some reason gave a wrong feeling to her phrasing, almost as if she was reading the lines.I truly believe that this movie could benefit enormously if they take it back to the editing room and cut about half an hour, because some of the scenes are unnecessarily too long for no reason whatsoever.*****Spoilers ahead *****I have the feeling at the conclusion of the story, that the director --or the producer or whoever decided about the ending-- panicked with the idea that the protagonist would end up being homosexual and happy as such, so they decided all of a sudden, after all that inner torture and knuckle biting throughout the whole movie, that, after all, our guy happened to be heterosexual (bisexual?) but since the ending is left totally open we'll never know what his true sexual orientation was.