May 6–13, 1999

movie shorts

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

Julio Medem has made a film of rapturous beauty and elegant camera work, carefully assembled and delicately cut. Where then is the magic check mark? Well, somewhere deep down, form should follow substance, and by Lovers' telegraphed conclusion, it seems as if all Medem's trickery is just a way to disguise the rather tired story of two lovers who are destined for each other from childhood. From Cocteau to David Lynch, filmmakers who experiment with form have turned to bland romance as an aesthetic life preserver, the simple element around which to build a complicated story. But a complicated telling without a complicated tale is like a bag of tricks with nothing at its bottom, a Harlequin romance written in Faulknerian prose. Lovers isn't a bad movie, but there's something slightly distasteful about its pseudo-sophisticated self-congratulation, the way it pins ribbons on its rough-hewn sentiment as if to make it palatable to those who would never be caught dead watching such gooey nonsense.

-Sam Adams