Mary needs to humiliate the conniving, working-class Other Woman so she can win back the philandering husband of her own social station. Whispered gossip being the prime social media of the ’30s, Mary soon learns the awful truth and, on a divorce trip to Reno, plans revenge - not on Stephen but on Crystal. With idyllic scenarios of the welcome beauty of finding someone who wants you, Fin de siglo is a gorgeous examination of what 21st century relationships can look like.Word spreads around a posh Manhattan beauty parlor that Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford), a perfume counter girl, is having affair with ritzy Stephen Haines and his sweet wife Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) isn’t yet in on the secret. Juxtaposing those uncomfortable conversations about what it means to make a life with another, fearful of what that does to your individuality, to your sexual urges, and to your sense of self.
The new and the familiar are constantly being shuffled in this dreamy film. He yearns to be alone yet, he also craves the company of this Spanish man wearing that Kiss shirt that looks all too familiar. With a tender and lustful gaze sustained over long, panning shots that showcase Barcelona’s beauty, Castro makes his central couple a prism through which to think about how love and intimacy shift shape in long term relationships. “I was tired of being jealous of people who had complete freedom,” Ocho tells Javi, explaining his recent breakup while up at the rooftop. In the several permutations we see of Ocho and Javi, we see very different versions of them: they’re horny, drunken guys whose attraction is as fiery as it is shameful they’re nameless hookups relishing the freedom of their desires run amok they’re committed parents who’ve found comfort, if not sex, in their shared bed. The out-of-time-ness of the film’s overlapping stories just highlights how many different and equally valid variations of same-sex intimacy can exist at any given time. Rather than force us to be invested in their pasts or their futures (will they or won’t they?), their various conversations and hookups add up to something else entirely talk of open relationships, of newfound sexual desires, of child-rearing, and heartbreak all commingle together. Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln CenterĬastro’s film - shot in a naturalistic style with nothing but the sounds of bustling Barcelona to score Ocho and Javi’s encounters - is about the changing face of gay male intimacy. Given everything you see, it’s unclear whether he’s revealing the film’s secret or obscuring it further - but, it doesn’t matter. “I had a dream that I was with someone for 20 years, but it wasn’t you,” Ocho tells Javi at one point. The two speak of partners they had, of cities they’ve lived in, of kids they’re raising, but what we see in the Barcelona apartment seems to mix them all together. This shuffling of time feels not so much disorienting as dreamlike.īy the time the credits roll, you’re left with a number of timelines that don’t add up and no clear sense of what’s real, what was imagined, what was a dream, and what may well have been an alternate history for these two men. Later still, Castro offers audiences yet another time shift which further destabilizes any semblance of linear chronology. Even so, Castro’s decision to change very little about his leading men’s appearances - no de-aging, no discernible youthful looks - alerts you that this is not you ordinary film. We turn back time to before Ocho had even come out or started dating the guy who he’d been with for 20 years, before the breakup that preceded his Barcelona trip. Just like that, the film flashes back to their initial meeting years ago. Except during a conversation later, as they share drinks in a picture-perfect rooftop, Javi reveals something that will upend everything you thought you knew about their one-night stand: they’ve met before. The sex and the intimacy that follows has you believe we’re watching yet another entry in the Before Sunrise canon, a Spain-set Weekend of sorts. Their coy flirtation at the beach eventually leads them to the apartment Ocho is staying at. That is, until Javi (Ramon Pujol) catches his eye. He’s a bit adrift, leisurely taking in the streets of the Spanish city. Ocho, a young Argentine man (Juan Barberini) is on holiday in Barcelona. That’s because, on first look, there is nothing unreal about what we’re watching in this languid decades-spanning love story. The dream logic that governs Lucio Castro’s feature film debut Fin de siglo ( End of the Century) is hard to pin down.