Divorced for more than a decade and with adult children who now have their own lives, Gloria seeks a new relationship in late middle-age. At a dancing club she meets Rodolfo, a man in similar circumstances to herself - except, crucially, that he has only been divorced for a year. Gloria and Rodolfo develop an intense and passionate relationship, but before long they discover that passion alone is not enough to ensure a smooth and certain passage from the foothills of desire to the summit of enduring love. Mundane reality, in the form of emotional commitments to children and former spouses that cannot be ignored, intrudes on their idyll. For all their attraction to each other they are unable to weather the consequent storms.
As a divorced person myself, I was well able to identify with the situation Gloria and Rodolfo find themselves in. So it was intensely sad to see their relationship fail largely through a lack of ability to truly empathise with each other's positions. As Rodolfo says, they really did have something special, perhaps something that will never come again to either of them. If only they had not abandoned it so readily . . .!
Paulina Garcia, as Gloria, and Sergio Hernandez, as Rodolfo, give outstanding performances, including some difficult and highly explicit sex scenes. How good to show older people as fully sexual beings rather than as an odd species of neuters for once! And how courageous of these actors to carry it off.
So this is a highly watchable movie that explores the nature of love in an era of multiple impermanent relationships. It is not always comfortable to watch but can still be thoroughly recommended.
(Viewed at Screen 2, The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 1st November 2013)
As a divorced person myself, I was well able to identify with the situation Gloria and Rodolfo find themselves in. So it was intensely sad to see their relationship fail largely through a lack of ability to truly empathise with each other's positions. As Rodolfo says, they really did have something special, perhaps something that will never come again to either of them. If only they had not abandoned it so readily . . .!
Paulina Garcia, as Gloria, and Sergio Hernandez, as Rodolfo, give outstanding performances, including some difficult and highly explicit sex scenes. How good to show older people as fully sexual beings rather than as an odd species of neuters for once! And how courageous of these actors to carry it off.
So this is a highly watchable movie that explores the nature of love in an era of multiple impermanent relationships. It is not always comfortable to watch but can still be thoroughly recommended.
(Viewed at Screen 2, The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 1st November 2013)