Written/Directed By: Julio Medem
Starring: Peru Medem/Fele Martinez as Child/Adult Otto, Sara Valiente/Najwa Nimri as Child/Adult Ana
Los Amantes del Círculo Polar‘s first hour, until Otto and Ana’s almost-encounter at an outdoor café-ish hangout, is absolutely flawless. The juxtaposition of narrative perspectives (namely those of Otto and Ana) expertly finds a solid middle ground between the gorgeously problematic subjectivity of Kurosawa’s Rashomon and the tiresome objectivity of Travis’ tragically awful Vantage Point; like the latter, the film captures the same narrative, the same events, except at the same time, like the former, it adds different voices and different explanations, which rapidly and effectively unravels the narrative, revealing startlingly new interpretations and beautiful depths. Here, specifically, this juxtaposition allows abundant opportunities for the intelligent script to explore the complex psychology of the two protagonists. Both characters are born to broken families (Ana’s father dies while Otto’s mother leaves when they are very young), and are left with single parents too desperate for mutual support to provide the sensitivity and care that they demand. With only each other for emotional support and to cope with loss, they project their missing parents onto each other and clandestinely engage in an incestuous relationship, and grow to become rebellious, reckless souls — Otto and Ana casually try to kill themselves, Otto suddenly, arbitrarily leaves home in pursuit of nothing, and Ana unflinchingly ends a four-year relationship to look for Otto. They’re not even portrayed in a particularly sympathetic manner, and often do crazy, offensive shit just for kicks. But Medem knows better than to impose any form of judgment on them. He knowingly describes their flaws, explains their origins, and leaves it up to us to decide how we feel about them. Even when dealing with their sex scenes, which most lesser directors would use as opportunities for moral judgment, he takes a powerfully ambivalent stance. On their first ‘sexual’ encounter when Otto enters her room while Ana is sleeping (naked), Otto even has the gentlemanly respect to leave Ana the fuck alone, even if he can’t help his teenage instinct to jerk off outside. In fact, the only overtly sexual contact they have is the foreplay; that’s how sensitive Medem is — he knows that sexploitationist sequences (which are prevalent in another Medem film Lucia y el sexo) will beg accusations of sensationalism and that non-inclusion of sex scenes will beg accusations of immaturity and/or avoidance.
However, the last 30 minutes of the film, while admittedly important and necessary to the structure and plot, feel overly tiresome and sickly sentimental, and lack the gorgeous ambivalence that characterizes the first hour. The main purpose of this part is to explain and unravel the various myths introduced in the first part of the film (eg Otto the German Pilot, the meaning of the cryptic Arctic Circle etc.), but in an attempt to bestow these enigmas with a deeper meaning, we are made to watch as the two protagonists achingly yearn for each other through their separation — every revelation we have is too invariably coupled with pain and unrequited desire. While I appreciate Medem’s appreciation for depth, the pain is too overwrought, too dramaticized here, and makes for an overly painful watch. Others might find this pain transcendent or powerful, but personally I think it’s a little too close (and overdone) for comfort. Ana and Otto’s mutual search efforts, in their schmaltzy on-the-verge-of-tears-ness, are also quite boring and irritating after a while. Okay, I get it. You miss him, he misses you, can we just move on and stop this self-pitying fuckerdom? Kthx xoxo.
Stylistically, this is a fascinating work. One major motif in the film is the notion of circularity, a metaphor for destiny, which presents the relationship between Otto and Ana as something pure and beautiful and fated. Los Amantes del Círculo Polar opens with a brief, cryptic, seemingly unintelligible narrative, and repeats the same narrative at the end of the film, except unlike its sub-par arthouse counterparts, this repetition/circularity actually helps us understand its meaning and significance in the grand scheme of things. Characteristically, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and Medem constantly finds a way to reveal the raw sensuality in a single glance, or a soft touch. Like Lucia y el sexo before it, this film is brimming with sexual tension, passion and energy, except it never once resorts to gratuitous sexploitation to get the point across; it’s subtle and awesome enough to leave much of the sex to the audience’s imagination.
Beyond its stylish sheen, however, this film is in many ways characteristic of classic Spanish cinema; that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. For one, the characters are inextricably linked together by an intricate network of relationships (Otto’s grandfather rescued a German soldier, who rescued a Spanish girl, had a son with her, Alvaro, who then started dating Ana’s mother and sent Ana to Finland, where she would eventually be reunited with Otto lolz), which imbues the plot with a powerfully engaging complexity. However, on the other hand, Los Amantes del Círculo Polar is occasionally weighed down by its excessively melodramatic score and its blatantly manipulative big-emotional-scenes, which together double-up as offensively helpful pointers of how the audience should act and respond to the film — a valiant but reproachable effort that undermines everyone’s intelligence and sense of discretion.
The biggest objection I have to this film is its ending, which perpetrates the notion that all forms of illicit love invariably result in death or destruction. Los Amantes del Círculo Polar is a film whose appeal banks heavily on its lack of judgment, its thoughtful ambivalence, and in killing Ana at the end, Medem too is suggesting that Ana and Otto’s love cannot result in a happy ending, that for all its purity and beauty it is still corrupt and punishable. The fantastic sequence at the 1-hour mark whereby Ana and Otto almost meet (but don’t) would’ve made a much better ending. As it stands, the ending doesn’t even tie in nicely with the notion of circularity. Medem suggests that Ana and Otto’s love will eventually find each other in the end (after they finish their circular journey of self-discovery), but the end offers only tragedy — which perhaps suggests that their love was doomed all along, or that Ana was dead all along. Either way, the final revelation seems out-of-place, and the tragic, illicit lovers bullshit is getting old. I want to see just ONE high-profile, high-budget, critically-acclaimed film about incest in which there is a happy ending. Right now, there are none. You have sex with your sister? Either one or both must die. Now, I’m not a fervent supporter of incest, but I’m also not self-important enough to judge other people for it, and neither should the few filmmakers bold enough to make films about it.
Ultimately, this film is a stunning meditation on destiny, relationship dynamics, loss and love, and manages to seamlessly incorporate Oedipal and Elektral complexes, incest, divorce and death (among other taboo subjects) without once ever losing focus on the two powerfully written protagonists. With a less tragic ending, and if the revelations in the last 30 minutes were spread throughout the film, this could’ve been one of the best films in the history of Spanish cinema. As of now, it just stands as a brilliant film that could have been more.
KevinScale Rating: 4/5
therein, Therin. 