End of the Century (2019)
Watch on other sites:
End of the Century (Fin de siglo) is an Argentine gay romantic drama film, directed by Lucio Castro. The film stars Juan Barberini as Ocho, a man from Argentina on vacation in Barcelona, who hooks up for a casual sexual encounter with Javi, played by Ramon Pujol. The men soon realize that they have met before, 20 years earlier in 1999, when they were both in the closet about their sexuality and too afraid to pursue a relationship with each other.
A haunting meditation on the unlived lives within us.
Allenism29 April 2020 – imdb
“End of the Century” is a film that trusts the viewer to keep up with every nervy leap that it takes, and ultimately rewards them in kind.
Writer/director Julian Castro assuredly constructs the story into three acts, each one existing in a different temporal space from the other. Wandering poet Ocho and more grounded TV producer Javi (beautifully performed by Baberini and Pujol) run into each other on a pedestrianized street in Barcelona, but the pretense of their chance encounter slowly peels away as the film moves through each facet of their unseeable connection. While the pair continues to converse and settle into each other’s company, a picture of two diverging paths emerges as both men reflect upon the choices which have ended up directing their domestic situations. The casualness with which the two men open up to one another builds upon the viewer’s expectation that what we are seeing are these two paths moving closer towards the middle, and possibly even merging. However this expectation is swiftly upended as the story performs a sudden backflip into the past, and then somersaults again into a gossamer space where Ocho and Javi have somehow escaped the factuality of their respective tracks.
The totality of “End of the Century” lands as a piercing rumination over the lives we could have lived but didn’t, and the course-defining experiences that we can only see in the rear-view mirror of our desires.
