If you've ever wanted to see a film that stresses style over substance, this is for you. To me, Son de Mar is beautiful to SEE, but there's precious little substance, unless mawkish, melodramatic, manipulative love yarns turn you on. This may be one of those famous 'chick flicks' you've heard so much about. We're about half-way through this film before anything really happens: Ulises (Jordi Molla) goes out to sea looking for tuna, and doesn't come back, leaving his wife Martina (Leonor Watling) and son to fend for themselves. Then, in a furious six minutes of screen time, they bury Ulises, Martina gets married again, and her son grows into mid-childhood. This rapid transposition is jarring, to say the least, and very sloppy: after 40 minutes of more or less hanging around, we're suddenly into a full-blown melodrama, all in six minutes. I think this is called wayward narrative pacing.Five years later, Ulises (as in the wandering superhero Ulysses; get it?), returns to his 'Penelope' (Watling) only to find she's married to Sierra (Eduard Fernandez), an inexplicably wealthy guy (what does he DO to earn all that dough?) who inexplicably keeps crocodiles as pets. When Martina, in great anger, questions Ulises about his absence, he tells her that he'll take her to the island of Sumatra someday and she'll understand EVERYTHING.And here's the thing: he DOESN'T take her to the island of Sumatra. The reference just dies somewhere in the script. He DOESN'T really explain where he was and why he ignored his wife and child for five years. He DOESN'T acquit himself as an honourable guy, and the movie DOESN'T fill in the plot holes that are staring at us for at least half of the film. I can only assume that director Bigas Luna wants us to fill in the story lines with the mystical clues (fish, reptiles, the sea) he offers through breathtaking cinematography and evasive dialogue. It just doesn't work. The narrative 'arc' on this film ends up looking more like a wobbly clothesline.I'm sure Jordi Molla is a good actor, but I just couldn't buy his Ulises as any kind of hero (which is what the original Ulysses was supposed to be). With moist sensuality, he spouts a short stanza of identical poetry from Virgil roughly 2,000 times and each and every time it excites Martina to explosive orgasm. This guy should be rented out to reinvigorate stale marriages. I'm sure Virgil would be impressed. He didn't get laid that often, as I understand it. This poetic 'device' figures prominently in the film, and I had no choice but to assume it was a gender reversal of Ulysses' famous 'siren song' (i.e. beautiful maidens singing seductively to far-off sailors, who were doomed if they answered the, well, siren call). If this is what Bigas Luna is up to, you can see the problem -- he's offering convoluted symbolism in a snatch-and-grab attempt at High Art. Once again, it just doesn't work, at least in my eyes.Watling is a beautiful and magnetic young actor, but she gives us a character here who doesn't seem to have much intellectual or even romantic depth. It's beyond me how she could desperately fall in love with a guy who sports a for-rent sign on his face (as in vacant), oily 1960s-style hair that looks more like seaweed, and one of those trendy 21st-century 'beards' (you know, four days' growth, no more, no less). He's SUPPOSED to be a dreamy kind of guy (I think), but those eyes of his suggest he might be suffering more from overexposure to a preposterous script. But, don't despair, this film is great to look at. Just don't try to connect the dots on the red herrings or think too much about what you're hearing in the way of dialogue. You can do a lost of fast-forwarding on this film (particularly in the first 40 minutes) and you really won't miss much.

Ulises is a literature teacher that arrives to a coastal town. There, he will fell in love to Martina, the most beautiful girl in town. They will start a torrid romance which will end in the tragic death of Ulises at the sea. Some years later, Martina has married to Sierra, the richest man in town and lives a quiet happy live surrounded by money. One day, the apparition of Ulises will make her passion to rise up and act without thinking the consequences. The plot is quite absurd and none of the actors plays a decent part. IN addition, three quarters of the film are sexual acts, which, still being well filmed, are quite tiring, as we want to see More development of the story. It is just a bad Bigas Luna's film, with lots of sex, no argument and stupid characters everywhere.

Yet another film with an illicit affair at its centre - I recently watched MATCH POINT (2005), DAMAGE (1992) and LA SEDUZIONE (1973) - though this is actually a variation on a much-used plot line which dates back to MY FAVORITE WIFE (1940), in which one half of a married couple is thought dead and, on returning several years later, finds the partner now belongs to a new family.As is to be expected from director Luna, the emphasis this time around is on eroticism - though it's not particularly graphic - and, here, leading lady Leonor Watling at least serves this purpose supremely well! Still, the decision to embellish the love-making with a purportedly poetic touch - in the form of the scholarly hero's recital of a suggestive elegy to the sea - ends up being a misfire, for the simple reason that the repetition serves only to render the whole somewhat monotonous! The film isn't bad but the narrative (courtesy of screenwriter Rafael Azcona, once valued collaborator to cult Italian film-maker Marco Ferreri) is just too predictable to generate much involvement from the viewer. The finale - in which the two lovers decide to leave everything behind them and sail away (on the boat which bears the film's name) to a new life together - adheres to the ideal of l' amour fou, but Luna and Azcona opt for an ironic double-twist instead! In essence, SON DE MAR is not as intriguing as the only other Bigas Luna title I've watched - THE CHAMBERMAID OF THE TITANIC (1997) - but I should be checking out at least one more film of his (BAMBOLA [1996]) fairly soon...which now makes me regret all the more having missed an Italian-TV showing of VOLAVERUNT (1999) a few months back!

Ulises says that naming a boat after one's wife is a forerunner of bad luck. From the moment he names it "Martina" we know misfortune will overtake them. Like a Greek tragedy what follows is inevitable.The numerous sex scenes in this drama are given an original touch when Ulises, a teacher of classical literature, mesmerizes Martina by reciting an episode from Virgil's Aeneid. While this may sound rather silly, Ulises delivers the lines in a poetic way which tends to enliven the romantic mood. Indeed his story oft repeated ultimately becomes part of the sex act. When Martina says "Tell me that story again" it is an invitation to indulge in another session of sex.The character of Ulises is interesting. Not the usual clean cut hero, but long-haired, unshaven and with a generally unkempt look. An easy prey for the seductive Martina. Their scenes together are mainly convincing except when he cries with his head in her lap. I do not feel moved by this scene as I feel I should. Perhaps it is because he has just handled a tuna fish, and the smell of fish is still on his hands.The introduction of Alberto's crocodile into the story leads one to surmise what horrible part it may play, and who will suffer as a consequence. All your guesses will be wrong! The planned drowning of the lovers at sea by evil and underhand forces brings to a close so many romantic interludes. But wait! The director of this film has decided that love transcends death. In a symbolic way we see their bodies lying in utter nakedness on a cold slab move together and embrace as true lovers do. Strange isn't it, how so many films end with a kiss?