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Lucia, Lucia Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 8 Reviews)

"Silence is a friend who'll never betray you."
"Lucia, Lucia" is a film that proves that exciting things are happening in Mexican cinema. Lucia (Cecelia Roth) is the heroine of this tangled tale, and the story begins when her husband Ramon (Jose Elias Moreno) suddenly disappears. Lucia begins receiving cryptic communications from a Maoist terrorist group called "Workers' Pride" who demand 20 million pesos as ransom for Ramon's return. Lucia doesn't have that sort of money, but then the terrorists reveal that Ramon has a secret bank account that contains slightly more than that amount.

Lucia's elderly neighbour, Felix (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa) comes to her aid. He's a geriatric revolutionary who still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Lucia also becomes romantically entangled with a young neighbour, Adrian (Kuno Becker). The three join forces, and in their efforts to free Ramon, they come across explosive gun dealers, and bored government bureaucrats.

Part thriller, part comedy, the plot twists and turns include revelations from Lucia that she's an unreliable narrator. She undergoes physical transformations several times as the plot develops, and she admits that part of her story is not true--she's a frustrated would-be novelist with a tendency to be 'creative' with the facts. She confesses, "I've had other lives", but it seems those lives have been imaginary more than anything else.

While the story spins on itself to little avail towards the end of the film, "Lucia, Lucia" from director Antonio Serrano has a fresh energetic approach is well worth catching if you're a fan of Mexican cinema or a fan of the delectable Cecilia Roth--always a fascinating actress to watch. In Spanish with English subtitles--displacedhuman

A different movie that leaves you thinking...
Is it worth not pursuing your own dreams? Is it worth sacrificing your inner self? Is it worth letting your life rot as you mature? The answer to all these life questions is "no" if you ask Lucia Romero, the character brilliantly played by acting legend Cecilia Roth in "Lucia, Lucia", a Mexican movie based on the book "La Hija del Canibal" by Rosa Montero. And if you ask me, I agree with her.

When the man she has been married to for ten years mysteriously dissapears, she finds herself at a crux, as most of the assumptions she had been basing her whole life on, one by one, start to fall apart. In her search for new meaning, she is aided by two of her neighbors: a man almost twenty years older than her, and one almost twenty years younger.

As the movie unfolds, though there are numerous plot twists that may leave you scratching your head, overall, the movie works on several levels. It is a different movie that leaves you thinking and in the end it forces you to revisit some of the above questions about yourself. I recommend it and give it four stars.

(3.5 STARS) All About Lucia, and Talent of Joyful Cecilia Ross: Another Good Mexican Film Delightfully Genre-Defying
Most films claim certain amount of credibility to tell its story. `Lucia Lucia' doesn't. The film rather goes in for the unreality, or constant twisting of the conventions of all the film genre (except that of comedy, which I think is the right description of `the film). Consequently what Lucia does first with the voiceover is to apologize to us for having said a lie. And that's only the beginning of the film.

But the film is all about Lucia, and that part is true. On December 27th, at the airport, husband of Lucia (Cecilia Ross) goes to the bathroom, and never comes back. Then someone calls her, and his disappearance turns out a kidnapping case. But as I said, Lucia immediately corrects the date (it was in fact 30th), and the detective is awfully sloppy. But again, we are not supposed to believe in everything, or to take it too seriously.

While waiting for a chance to do something on her own, she enlists help from the two people living in the same building: Félix, old political refugee from Cuba, and Adrián, young handsome guy. As they delve into the mystery of Lucia's husband's disappearance, Lucia starts to be attracted to Félix romantically.

[ALL ABOUT LUCIA] As you can expect from the new wave Mexican films, the narratives are unique, cinematography is crisp, and acting (of the three principals) is superb. What divides the opinions among the viewers would be the first one, though: narrative, or storytelling. Not that it is hard to follow. It is only that the film mixes several genres - thriller, road movie, romance, etc. - and it refuses to be pigeonholed into one. The only proper way I can think of to describe the characteristics of `Lucia Lucia' is - `All About Lucia.'

Now let's talk about Lucia, or Cecilia Ross. Without the great acting from Ross, who knows how to make the entire film moderately comical but not too jokey, `Lucia Lucia' would have been an unendurable mess. Ross heightens the pleasant and fantastic feeling of experiencing something extraordinary, without losing the reality of the character.

But again, I have to talk about its narrative. I am afraid that the film is trying to push the limit too much. You know, in films, you often wish that certain part of it would turn out the way you want, and `Lucia Lucia' has one such thing. In the lengthy coda, where everything should have been in the right place, `Lucia Lucia' still attempts to give us a twist. No thank you. I would rather not to have any more twist.

Probably `Lucia Lucia' is best appreciated as light-hearted romance about a middle-aged woman who suddenly learns how to see things differently. And we are also invited to see the film (or any film) with entirely new eyes. If not everything succeeds here, that is not because we don't want that changing, but that we don't want constant, non-stopping changing. But the talent of Cecilia Ross and the joy of watching her character are real, and to them go the four stars.

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