"This film had a profound effect on me" gushed the British Film Institute programmer (albeit reading from a card) as he introduced 'End of the Century' at the 2019 London Film Festival. I am afraid I can not say the same...
The film opens with several shots of Ocho (Juan Barberini) as he walks along a street, looks confused, opens a door, opens another door, looks in a refrigerator, walks on a beach... this may seem to some viewers like setting the slow mood of the piece; to others it will merely seem like padding. Something finally happens when what at first is a casual hook-up with Javi (Ramón Pujol) develops into a tentative friendship, before Javi reveals he and Ocho met and had a drunken coupling twenty years before. That Ocho forgot this is unbelievable for several reasons: a) given both Javi and Ocho were in long-term relationships with women when they first met, it is entirely possible they were each other's first homosexual experience - would a man really forget that?; b) in the twenty-years earlier flashback sequence both men look exactly the same as they do in the present, even to the extent of having the same beards; and c) Pujol is absolutely gorgeous; I refuse to believe anyone who had encountered him would forget it! Subsequent plot developments suggest an explanation for these difficulties - but still further developments open up the questions once again. By which time the viewer may have lost patience at having to put up with so many unanswered questions.
I do not regret watching the film - there is some fairly decent nudity, if nothing else - but overall it seems, as has been noted by other reviewers, rather self-indulgent.
The film opens with several shots of Ocho (Juan Barberini) as he walks along a street, looks confused, opens a door, opens another door, looks in a refrigerator, walks on a beach... this may seem to some viewers like setting the slow mood of the piece; to others it will merely seem like padding. Something finally happens when what at first is a casual hook-up with Javi (Ramón Pujol) develops into a tentative friendship, before Javi reveals he and Ocho met and had a drunken coupling twenty years before. That Ocho forgot this is unbelievable for several reasons: a) given both Javi and Ocho were in long-term relationships with women when they first met, it is entirely possible they were each other's first homosexual experience - would a man really forget that?; b) in the twenty-years earlier flashback sequence both men look exactly the same as they do in the present, even to the extent of having the same beards; and c) Pujol is absolutely gorgeous; I refuse to believe anyone who had encountered him would forget it! Subsequent plot developments suggest an explanation for these difficulties - but still further developments open up the questions once again. By which time the viewer may have lost patience at having to put up with so many unanswered questions.
I do not regret watching the film - there is some fairly decent nudity, if nothing else - but overall it seems, as has been noted by other reviewers, rather self-indulgent.