Masterful Movie

Am I Missing Something?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I was reading through other reviews and I was surprised that people didn't get the point of this story. Previous movies of Medem I did like. But these were not so deep, so intense. I think the reason is that movie dedicated to his sister. And knowing that her paintings were used in this movie just gives even more feelings about that film. I really loved that and advising to all my friends who like other movies than Transformers. Perfect acting, perfect story-line, perfect idea behind, perfect soundtrack. Whole idea about being mother of good human - so powerful and great. In the end I was crying with tears of happiness. I was so happy that someone could make such a movie. Room in Rome was not such deep but not as simple as Lucy and Lovers. My applause to Julio Medem.

I also saw "Lucía y el Sexo" and I liked it. A LOT! However, "Caótica Ana" left me with a bitter feeling of a good artist in a pushing manner to impress. In my opinion, this movie has a wonderful beginning, beautiful images, intricate relations, but then it continues nowhere with exaggeration in an evident effort of being modern, artistic, tempting through crushing images, shocking without content. What's the idea at the end? What's the purpose of Ana's cyclic dying? Why there are no elements to underline here character or personality? No, my vote it would be normally 5, but after Lucia y el Sexo, this movie has 1 (awful).

When you align yourself with an artist, it is a true commitment - as deep as any in life. It should not be taken lightly and I suppose the commitment can be as deep as that which you, the art and the artist can permit. That can be deep, permanent and resilient, and such is the case with myself and Medem. There are three living filmmakers who I trust in this way.When you do this, when you braid imaginations a sketch, a hint, has import. If it suggests that it should have been finished and is not, the difference becomes artistic. If it fails, eve if it repulses, it matters.This film is less perfect than his two previous. Its that perfection that first attracted me — not the perfection itself but that someone could imagine such a type of structure. The control over it is merely a matter of conversation. This film has much of that vision of order: nested realities; art within art; selves within selves; symmetries of all sorts; honest giving of selves as a symmetry. It has visual expressions of this: from Caliban's Tempest cave through modern New York to Greenaway- like quantifications. Sea. Desert. But the order is broken, and I see that has put off viewers all over the world. This gives the impression that it is half-baked, that it is not finished. For instance, there's a mirroring of desert Indians and displaced Arabs that doesn't seem to work. There's a confluence of several types of violence that seems as if it could have been powerful but is not. There's a remarkable notion of painting, painting doors and painting with feces that could have become archetypal but fails. But each of these is a matter of disorder muting the effect and thereby making it all the more powerful. The personal story, if you do not know it, is that Medem's sister Ana was a painter. The paintings you see here by the character Ana are hers. She was killed at 22, just when this character is killed. There is a retroactive disorder that ripples back through time to perturb the movie that probably once was as perfect and powerful as "Sex and Lucia."Its that perturbation that is the art. If you open yourself as I have, this will matter. If not, well, someone died and it didn't matter.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I saw this last month at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. The premise of this film was done before back in 1968 in the film Candy. You take a lovely nymph-like girl with a lot of hair and a beautiful body and build a series of disjointed, ridiculous sketch-like stories around her with the help of a big name actor or two and pretend it's a comedy. This film does the same except it pretends to be a drama. The films title character Ana (Manuela Vellés) is a gifted young artist living with her father Klaus (Matthias Habich) in a cave near Ibiza, Spain. Yes, they live in a cave but it's quite nice and richly appointed for a cave dwelling. Newcomer Vellés almost didn't have the role as it was originally attached to actress María Valverde who wisely bowed out and you can only imagine if it was her refusal to do a certain scene in this film. One day a wealthy art patron from France named Justine (veteran international talent Charlotte Rampling) discovers the artistic potential in Ana and wants to cultivate her talent by setting her up in her exclusive art colony she runs in Madrid. Ana meets Linda (Bebe Rebulleto) who becomes her best friend and Said (Nicolas Cazalé) who becomes her boyfriend. Ana discovers the doors to past lives through regressive hypnotism by an young American hypnotist named Michael (Asier Newman). The movie has you hooked for a while and you wonder where it's going to go but once she heads for New York it rapidly falls apart as a film trying to hard to be an art film with a political and social message. The film looks great with art direction by Montse Sanz and cinematography by Mario Montero and direction from the talented and celebrated, international film festival award winning Julio Medem. The film is dedicated to Medem's sister Ana Medem whose actual artwork are featured through the film. Her Picassoesque style painting were to be shown at an exhibit in Valencia when on her way there she was tragically killed in a car accident. I hate to be critical of a film dedicated to someone who represents such a personal loss to it's director but the story written by director Medem is so bad that I can't help it. Watching this film you realize that this guy knows how to make a film but you wonder why he didn't make one this time. It features some nudity and some prolonged unnecessary violence and I would give this a 5.5 out of 10 and not recommend it to a general audience.