Sex and Lucia

Adept at plumping the depths of love and loss, writer-director Julio Medem (Lovers of the Arctic Circle) demonstrates his talent for entrancing visuals and his penchant for extraordinary twists of fate in this sexually-charged melodrama. Goya award-winner Paz Vega stars as a beautiful, strong, yet vulnerable young waitress named Lucia who has run away to a parched Mediterranean island paradise to escape the pain of losing her suicidal lover Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa) to an automobile accident. Completely unaware of any connection, she befriends another woman on the island (Najwa Nimri) who once slept with Lorenzo and--unbeknownst to him--bore a child. Medem then intertwines Lucia's emotional convalescence with the histories of all three characters in a heartrending, hairpin-curving narrative of circumstance, coincidence and destiny. Gorgeous metaphorical filmmaking (the island is photographed in heat-baked, sun-bleached colors) and several powerful performances balance out Medem's sometimes overreaching quest for intensity through the weird sexual peccadilloes of peripheral characters. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)