Day fifty-nine: Lovers of The Artic Circle (May, 7)

I've seen Lovers of The Arctic Circle (Los Amantes del Circulo Polar) some years ago, at a small cinema. There was only a few people around me. The sense of solitude got bigger and bigger during the movie, as the enchantment with a story that had seemed a bit cheesy at first. 

For a long time, it has been one of my favorites films in life. However, despite the lively memory of the overwhelming feeling that I was carring with me when I left the theater, I couldn't place some of the story's details. So I decided to met it again.

I must say, somethings are better staying in the past. 

I thought the movie is still extremely beautiful. The story and the characters are woven in a delicate pattern. What connects us in the world, the people that connect us to the world, fate, free will, the little signs that life present us... everything is there, beautifully pictured in the story of palindromes Ana and Otto. Like life, their name are circles. Their lives are circles, even if incomplete - as Otto tells us at the begginning. This movie is big as life in itself, and I could confirm it again.

The point about somethings staying in the past? What I felt once was not with me yesterday, of course. Like in life, we sometimes try to capture feelings and meaning and sensation from the past. At times, a sense of dejá vu is there. But at other moments, the feeling is different, and we mourn what we are not able to get back. We shouldn't, though. Despite different, Lovers of the Artic Circle brought me new insights and perceptions, adding to the enchantment that is still with me, if I access that remote screening some years ago.

All the time during the movie I thought about the many signs in my life. The places that make sense to me, as the Arctic Circle makes to Ana and Otto, the things that seem to lead me to a certain direction... details that look like nothing at all until they show their purpose. As I said, a movie big as life, with many possibilities - and now I have two, once and now. 

Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Los Amantes del Circulo Polar). Directed and
writen by Julio Medem. With: Najwa Nimri, Fele Martinez, Nancho Novo.
Spain/France, 1998, 104 min., Color (DVD). 

PS: I don't know what came first, Lovers of The Arctic Circle or Sex and Lucía (Lucía y el Sexo), but the fact is that I fell in love with Julio Meden.  He can picture life in a dreamy yet accurate way. And he talks about love and sex with such honesty that is beautiful to see in the cinema - Bernardo Bertolucci also does that, I think. These two movies were so perfect for me that I fear a little his other films. It is silly, I know, but sometimes this happens to me. The same old attempt to not lose the enchantment.