FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
LUCÍA, LUCÍA
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.
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