User Reviews

I must agree with reviewer Sitenoise in regard to the "music video" scene. It was clichéd and pointless. I think the writers wanted to show the female character's playful side and the only thing they could think of was to have her bop around the room to a pop song. If that's the tack to take, then a few seconds of her singing along in the bathroom mirror would have been enough. But instead the movie veered off into an MTV cutaway. Why? Everything was going so well up until that point. To me it took some time to recover from that, because it took me out of the film itself; I was no longer watching a movie about two people attracted to each other and who acted on that attraction, and who then found that there was an emotional chemistry going on underneath their physical attraction - instead, the viewer was treated to a music video. It interrupted the tone.

The movie does regain its moorings after the "music vid" moment, and I was once again captivated by it. Other writers are correct when they say that Daniela is the most compelling character; she has the greater mystery attached to her and I found myself wanting to know afterward what happened to her. At times the actress reminded me of the great Juliette Binoche, in her faraway glances that conveyed such ineffable loneliness and melancholy.

A useful comparison, if you've seen this or are going to: also watch "Room In Rome", which is the same basic story, except that the two lovers are both women.

En la Cama is a film about a guy and a girl who have a one night stand, and end up opening up to each other like they never have to anyone before, and it seems at times that they wished their relationship was more than a one night thing. The concept is good, but the film seems like a bad version of "Before Sun Rise". The conversation the two leads have (while in bed, the whole film happens in a motel room) sounds a bit forced at times, and is quite dull. The sex scenes are done in quite a brutal way, and are longer than necessary and the camera seems to hide, sort of like we are spying on them, and also there are a lot of out of focus shots. I don't get why it was shot that way, it makes us miss any looks of delight they might give each other while playing and being childish, and it makes it hard for the audience to connect, care, and feel what the characters are going through. Is not all bad, it has its moments, but they are wide apart and manage to get cheap laughs. Half the audience feel asleep during the film, and is not that long at all. The acting is alright. Valenzuela gives quite a convincing performance, and does a good gob with the mediocre script, but Lewin falls short, she can't make the words her own. This could have been a good movie, but it seems like it was done in a hurry, missing potentially good moments that may have helped character development and it lacks intense moments, making it a slow, dull film that doesn't give its viewers anything new. The whole idea of the film is that its easier to have true intimacy (meaning a true connection, not sex) with a total stranger, because we never have to face them again. I got the point, but I didn't feel it. And what good is a movie if it doesn't make you feel??? En la Cama is an improvement in Chilean cinema, thanks to its technical details, but still it has a long way to go, it needs to figure out how to truly reach the audience. ( a little trivia: the fire escape in the motel room says SEXIT)

This movie is a complete turd, a goddamn pastiche for snobs. How can you make a movie with no budget for actors, landscapes, car pursuits or explosions? take a couple, put them into a room for the entire run, and keep them saying topics on every topic from "look, mommy, I have no Willy" to "this is the meaning of life and death". Let have balls and instead of kitsch theology talk about Heidegger the next time. And the special mention goes to it's spectacular "I would be able to make MTV videos if I wanted to, but i don't" montage.

Whatta poor French cinema imitation!!Pure rubbish!!!!!!

I'll add a couple comments more since IMDb asks me to do so... although I think that it's boring and unnecessary to say that the actors are as charming as a brick is; that the movie is interrupted by a stupid "amateur home musical video clip" in order to promote the latest (Chilean maybe?)radio hit; and that it's pretentious sensibility is absolutely laughable

Boring.

If you are going to treat us to nothing but two actors for 85 minutes, at least have a decent script. The acting is good, but the actors can's salvage the script.

This movie seems to be a little like fusion jazz or extreme prog rock: made by musicians for musicians - anybody who isn't a proficient player (and appreciates great technical skill) will find it boring instead of marveling at the odd time signatures and fast scale runs. My brother (who is a movie maker himself, his short films have been featured in film festivals in Cuba, L.A., France, Russia, etc) and his movie-industry related friends liked it, nice photography, editing, etc.

But for "plain old me who doesn't make movies", the script is boring, and the "plot twists" are so far-fetched that I simply couldn't maintain the suspension of disbelief. **SPOILERS** "Boohoo, I killed my little brother"?! A big stack of unsent wedding invitations a week before the wedding?!? Give me a break! A beautifully-shot dancing sequence... that doesn't do squat for the story, character development, hello? Maybe it was inserted for giving the film a bit of energy?

My opinion: A waste of money. (And my wife went as far as declaring it "Worst Movie Ever" ;)

The story arc gets an A+: At the beginning of the film, two strangers have already met and are already embracing one another In Bed. On the physical plane, the only touching they know is sexual, the only emotion, lust. At the end of the film, after having created a deep bond through knowledge of each other, beyond only sexual knowledge, both the physical and emotional planes are almost familial in nature. Sexual touching and lust have escaped them. Their embrace, In Bed, as the film ends reflects this change.

The film begins with about three minutes of moaning and groaning (which transforms into grunting and groaning, if you know what I mean) by the couple having sex. It started to annoy me about half way through because there wasn't anything attractive or interesting to look at. This is one of those directorial choices that are difficult to make: annoy the audience and hope they understand later why it had to be done that way. The director didn't want to titillate the audience with shots of what turn out to be attractive bodies, he wanted to make clear the couple were engaged in a deeply lustful encounter--for each other, not the audience.

I applaud that decision but confess I reacted to most of the rest of the film that way. I found myself annoyed very often throughout this film, a reaction I don't think the director had intended.

The entire film is shot in a motel room. The couple are in bed the whole time except for a quick bathtub break to give them a reason to get naked again.

To be fair, other viewers could easily like this film a lot more than I did. If you find the couple attractive (I found them both very attractive) you're halfway there. The other half depends on the delivery and content of the stories they share with one another. That's where the film failed me.

For example, we learn at the very beginning of the film (after the moaning, groaning, and grunting stops) that these two people don't know each other's names. The boy asks, "What's your last name again?" and the girl responds, "I think you don't remember my name and that's just a gracious way to ask again." The boy denies that this is the case. He gets busted in short order, but it's not a big deal as it turns out the girl thought she had just slept with someone other than who this boy turns out to be. The conversation went right from "What was your name again", to "Tell me about the other men you have slept with in this motel room." I found that, and most of the rest of the dialog in this film, to be inorganic and improbable. The director has approximately ninety minutes to get these characters to reveal themselves to us. With a certain portion of that taken up by more love-making, he's got to get right to the point.

I often think a joke is only as good as the setup. For others, a string of punch lines might work fine. I didn't like the setups. I did like the people, but I don't think they were very good actors.

A film like this is going to have a least a couple obligatory scenes: One, play a romantic song while one actor turns to look at the other just as the other is turning away. We've all seen the scene before. And two, play an upbeat song for the girl to dance provocatively to so she can show us how adorable and how much fun she is while the guy shows how much fun he is by showing us how much he enjoys her.

I thought both of those scenes in this film were awful. The dance scene was filmed horribly, zoomed in too close, and edited with too many quick edits. Someone once told me that if you see a martial arts film and the camera zoom is very close and the edits quick, it means the performer doesn't know martial arts very well and the director must try and present the illusion that they do. I say, ditto for provocative, getting to know you dance scenes.

Having said all this, I still think it's possible for someone else to enjoy this movie. It wants to be a sweet art house film and succeeds in that.

I felt the dialog and the director's capturing of it were awful. If others find resonance with the way this couple is filmed talking to one another they will like the film. As for the naked bodies and sex, there's better (9 songs, for example), but this couple is attractive and they have very attractive, real looking bodies, IMHO.

"En La Cama" (In Bed) opens to the sound of passionate sex. The camera seems to be under the sheets and that's mostly what we see, though we get a glimpse of a thigh here, a breast there. There's a climax and the camera pulls back to show the couple, lying backs to each other, catching their breath.

Meet Bruno and Daniela, both attractive and probably affluent young Chileans (we learn he's in grad school). They just met for the first time earlier in the evening and bopped off to have a casual one-night stand in a motel room, where they are now and remain for the entire movie. They don't even know each other's names yet and, so, they start to get acquainted.

It all starts out playful. They tease each other. They talk about former lovers. He explains an absurd theory he has about how everyone has one of three personalities defined by what kind of movies one likes. She shows off her appendectomy scar. They smoke. They get horny and make love again.

Then things get more serious. They fight when he accidentally calls her by the name of a former girlfriend. Secrets come out. She cries. More revelations. They peek in each other's wallets while the other is in the bathroom. They try to go to sleep, but end up talking some more. They can't stop looking at each other. As the hours approach dawn, it becomes apparent these two are falling in love, but because of off-screen circumstances, there doesn't appear to be any future they can share. Finally, each of them reveals a secret not only heartbreaking, but unnerving. They fall into a passionate but non-erotic embrace. The end.

I watched this as an insta-view on Netflix and found it completely absorbing. But then I'm the kind of film goer who seeks out these offbeat gems.

Some posts here suggest the actors, Blanca Lewin as Daniela and Gonzalo Valenzuela as Bruna, spend most of the movie in the nude. Not so. Most of the time he's in boxers and she's in a camisole and panties. Valenzuela does a creditable job as the somewhat hangdog Bruno, but it is Lewin who makes this movie work. She has big, expressive eyes, but it is her full, generous mouth set into a kind of rueful smirk that we are drawn to.

As to the sex, it is erotic, but far from graphic. There's little on view here you wouldn't see in a steamy American thriller. It's about two people who connect on a deep emotional level in one night. Sex is just the calling card.

I saw this movie at NY New Directors/New Films. Was skeptic at the beginning. I haven't seeing "Saturday", another movie by Matías Bize. The plot is simple. Two strangers having sex in the motel. They introduce themselves only afterwords. They start talking, telling truth and lies. Slowly they start revealing their true past. As one can notice they start flirting and seducing each other. When spiritual connections between two of them establish viewer realized that under different circumstances it would be a happy couple. However they will go their own ways... Excellent dialogs. Way above ordinary play of Blanca Lewin and Gonzalo Valenzuela