It is an outrage that two people of the same sex can get married and yet cannot buy this film. The UK censor has given it an 18 certificate. There is no criminality in this film, no drug abuse and simulated sex where no genitalia is visible. To me the simulation cannot be termed real sex and there is nothing in this film that would not pass for a 15 if it was aimed at a heterosexual audience. It is discrimination pure and simple.
Now for the film. I watched it twice and the first time I found it tiresome. I was not keen on the actors who did not engage me, and I found that the beauty of the film visually got in the way of the characters. At that point I thought this is a 4 or 5 at most. The second time light dawned and I saw the subtle references to past, present and the tragedy of human alienation more clearly. The actors look ordinary, deliver the dialogue in an ordinary way and walk around a city ( Barcelona here ) in the way any of us would do. The fact that they look more or less the same despite 20 years difference was no problem. Even on a banal level some of us age slowly and do look more or less the same. The real revelation to me was how much this film resembles Antonioni's great film ' L'Eclisse '. Nearly 70 years ago this masterpiece with Alain Delon and Monica Vitti was the culmination of modernity and a shuffling off of the two world wars and the dread of another. Please viewers who know this film watch the ending and see the fire in a corner of the screen. Post Modern now we wait for another century and another 70 years of who knows what change and destruction. The two characters walk through memory and forgetting, just as Vitti and Delon did and as in ' L'Eclisse ' there is a wild dance in the middle which to me shows defiance as well as pleasure. Also watch out for the David Wojnarowicz book ' Close To The Knives ' ( Aids themed; defiantly so ) and the fears of one of the characters. No this is not a boring film, perhaps a little too fussily aesthetic for my taste, but a film that shows stages of History and our own history within it. The film cries out to be watched multiple times and if it has faults and most films have, then concentrate on the eternal situation of alienation and how we adjust to loss and renewal.
Review of End of the Century
