Sex and Lucía
Short description
Julio Medem wrote and directed Sex and Lucía, a Spanish drama released in 2001. Paz Vega plays Lucía, a young waitress working in central Madrid whose life is upended when her boyfriend Lorenzo, a writer, disappears. She leaves the city for a quiet Mediterranean island, hoping the distance and solitude will let her recover. There she lodges with Elena, a woman unable to cry since her daughter died, and slowly comes to see that she shares a buried secret with the people around her, one that can only be untangled by re-examining her relationship with Lorenzo. The film's title refers to the two intertwined strands of that story: her affair with the writer and the process of confronting what it contained.
The narrative moves between Madrid and the island and circles back repeatedly over the same events. Tristán Ulloa plays Lorenzo, with Elena Anaya as Belén, Najwa Nimri as Elena and Daniel Freire as Carlos. The film sits second in the directing career listed here, following Lovers of the Arctic Circle and preceding Room in Rome, ma ma, The Tree of Blood and 8.
It took about 8 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from roughly 40,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 out of 10 from 663 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 out of 10 from 69 reviews places it close to the audience scores rather than clearly apart from them.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film was shot on the island of Formentera.
- Initially, Ana Risueño was cast in the role of Lucia, but director and screenwriter Julio Medem later decided she was not right for the part, and Paz Vega was invited instead. Vega was seven years younger than Risueño and managed to read through the entire script in four hours of continuous reading, which only confirmed Medem's belief that he had not made a mistake in choosing the actress this time.
- Julio Medem imagined filming the movie on Formentera, one of the Balearic Islands, during a break in work preceding the release of the drama 'Lovers of the Arctic Circle' (Medem, 1998). He rented a moped and traveled around the island, taking notes and visualizing where and in which scenes the characters of the future film would appear.
- Doubles were used for the explicit sexual scenes.
- Julio Medem rewrote the script numerous times, and rehearsals took five months.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
