End of the Century

Ocho has come to Barcelona alone; he has rented a flat, walks about, sits on the beach. He sees a man on a balcony. Later they meet in the street. The man's name is Javi. They spend a night together. The next day Javi says something: they met in the same city twenty years earlier, in 1999, and Ocho does not remember it. At that point the film goes back. Lucio Castro writes and directs. The opening runs almost twenty minutes with hardly a word; the man's daily movements, the empty flat and the city. The dialogue starts late. The structural decision is not to separate the two times. The 1999 section is shot with the same actors, with no makeup and no difference of age; the viewer works out which time it is only from context. There is a third section as well, and it is neither past nor present; it shows a life that did not happen. The film gives that on the same plane. The subject is not nostalgia but the weight left by roads not taken. It is short, about eighty minutes, made cheaply with a small cast. Who it is for: viewers who like independent Latin American cinema and relationship films that play with time. Who it is not for: it is slow, the narrative leaves things unresolved, and it will pass by a viewer waiting for events.