Sex and Lucía

Lorenzo (Ulloa) is blocked. His book editor suggests he write about a sexual tryst his friend has told him about, an anonymous one-night stand of some years previously. 'Put lots of sex in it,' the editor urges him. Their meeting is interrupted by a beautiful young woman, Lucía (Vega), who confesses she has been watching him for some time, since she fell in love with his first novel. Maybe if they spent some time together, he could grow to love her too? 'I think I just did,' he tells her. Sex and love are the dual starting points for the entwined plot strands of another Medem walk in the woods, though the movie itself begins later, fanning outwards and backwards, teasing with its secrets. Medem likes to disorient; his characters like to challenge each other too. Conversation is playful and exploratory: in a word, flirtatious. There's lots of sex here - exuberant, ecstatic, exhibitionist, giving way to a more damaging hedonism, a guilty quasi-incestuous betrayal which almost chokes the movie halfway through - yet this mysterious, surprising and ravishingly beautiful film rights itself triumphantly in an intoxicatingly romantic last act of redemption and resurrection.