LUCÍA, LUCÍA
Directed by: Antonio Serrano.
Produced by: Matthias Ehrenberg, Christian Valdelièvre & Epigmenio Ibarra.
Written by: Serrano, based on the novel by Rosa Montero.
Director of Photography: Xavier Pérez Grobet.
Edited by: Jorge García.
Music by: Nacho Mastretta.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Country of Origin: Mexico. 109 min. Rated: R.
With: Cecila Roth, Carlos Ávarez-Novoa & Kuno Becker.
DVD Special Features: Full Screen. Widescreen. English & Spanish Subtitles.

With first-rate acting and clever dialogue, the latest comedy from writer-director Antonio Serrano (Sex, Shame and Tears) unravels the story of a bored middle-aged woman, who stumbles into the secret world of her money-laundering bureaucrat husband. Lucía (All About My Mother’s Roth), eagerly waits to board the plane to begin her Brazilian vacation. There’s just one problem: her husband has disappeared from the men’s room. The crisis resumes in her posh apartment amid a swarm of calls from friends and family, when Lucía, as narrator, reveals in voiceover that she lied about the date of the disappearance. Oh, and her apartment is not so nice. The scene starts over in a lesser Mexico City flat, where Lucía is joined by the wistfully aging 26th of July veteran Felix (Álvarez-Novoa) and the swooning and brooding 25-year-old Adrian (Becker). Together they untangle the circumstances of the disappearance of Lucía’s less-than-honest husband. Along the way, they fall in love, quote Confucius and Thomas Jefferson, and scenes meant to be taken as real give way to fantasy scenes waved away by the narrator’s keen desire to set the record straight. The disjointed structure seems at first a distraction in an otherwise charming film. However, in the end it underscores the film’s theme: the importance of truth in storytelling. Each time the narrator reveals her own blemishes and how she tried to conceal them, the paradoxical admission - akin to someone telling you he is a routine liar - makes for an honest film about the art of lying.
Joel Whitney, Poet/Screenwriter, Teaches at Fordham University
July 24, 2003