Sólo Dios Sabe

Sundance 2006
My Sundance cherry was popped this Friday at the screening of Carlos Bolado's SOLO DIOS SABE, starring Diego Luna (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) and Alice Braga (City of God). Luna's other films have been rather lackluster (TheTerminal, Criminal), and perhaps it's because this boy excels at playing the Latin Lover. He was smoldering in Y Tu Mama as he is in this film. His chemistry with Alice is so raw and powerful that you just hate watching any scene where they are apart.

Dolores (Braga) is stuck in Mexico because she has lost her Brazilian passport and can't go back to her teaching job or her married boyfriend back in the U.S. When thieves break into her friends' car, Damian (Luna) offers his help. He falls in love with her at first sight. Despite finding her passport in the parking lot, he doesn't give it back and offers her a ride to the embassy in Mexico City. Their three-day journey offers audiences a glimpse of rural Mexican life and introduces us to Damian's religious fanaticism – i.e. he must sprinkle holy water on his car, buy saint cards, light candles for a bird he hit accidentally on the road. All of this is in complete contrast to Dolores, who has never really had a strong sense of faith. But despite their differences, they start falling in love. When they finally reach Mexico City, they immediately go to the embassy where she finds out her beloved grandmother has died. Dolores is distraught because she can't go to Brazil to pay her respects without her passport. Damian hates seeing her this way and finally gives her passport back. She's furious and refuses to ever see him again. When she arrives in Brazil, she discovers her grandmother was a follower of some kind of Brazilian voodoo. She embraces this as something that her grandmother left behind for her. However, this is where the film hits a weak spot. While each character is "finding himself" and praying to various gods, I started to get bored. I would rather see the passion between Damian and Dolores, and how they overcome their differences. When Damian comes to Brazil to win her back, she refuses him.

[Read no further if you don't want to know how the movie ends]
Just as Damian is about to go back to Mexico, she finds out she's pregnant and asks him to stay. This is also rather confusing because we don't know whether Dolores truly loves Damian or whether she just wants a father for the baby. Four months into the pregnancy, she discovers she has uterine cancer and decides to keep the baby. This tears Damian apart because it's apparent she loves this unborn child more than him. He starts to question his faith in God and why he's been dealt such a bad hand - continually losing the people he loves - his parents, and now his girlfriend. However, when Dolores passes, Damian realizes God has given him a new love - their daughter. This love is what helps him restore his faith in God.

http://www.spinandstir.com/2006/01/solo_dios_sabes_only_god_knows.htm#more
 

let me just preface this review by saying, jason, you would have loved this movie. you are a fool for not coming. also i am now going to give a complete and utter spoiler about the end of this movie within the review. so if you want to see it with no knowledge of the end you shouldn't read this. i'll surround the spoiler paragraph by ** and SPOILER so you could just avoid that one paragraph too if you wanted.

the director of solo dios sabe, carlos bolado, was at the screening christine and i attended at the kabuki on sunday. he won me over pretty much immediately with his overwhelming need to speak with his hands. so there he was, thoughtlessly waving the microphone around in one hand while the other hand gestured in sync--all the while his mouth is moving and potentially interesting observations were issuing forth. we could only hear half of them though when the haphazard microphone strayed close enough to his mouth to pick up a tidbit or two. so crazy adorable, i was in heaven!

the movie itself was pretty much like heaven also as it exceeded my previous hope for it. my only hope having been, "please let diego luna be in it A LOT." oh thank god for him being one of the two main characters as this meant he was in it practically all the time. heaven. it also exceeded my expectations by actually being really good.

the story line follows dolores (played by the phenomenol alice braga) who loses her passport in mexico (TJ) and needs to go to the brazillian embassy in mexico city to get a new one. diego luna (fuck if i care what his name in the movie was) lives in MC and has been in TJ on a journalism job so they hook up and he is driving her back to MC with him. unbeknownst to her, but known to the whole audience, diego actually has her passport as he found it on the ground. he is concealing this fact from her in order to enjoy her company. anytime diego luna wants to steal my passport, i'll just hand it to him. no problem.

along the road trip diego's spirituality becomes apparent while dolores' lack of faith is equally made known. they become intimate while drunk and alice braga gives the best sex simulation i've ever seen. normally watching people have sex in movies does not make me want to immediately go out and have sex with someone. however, alice is a complete sensory overload. honestly. it's incredible. and she has sex quite a bit in this movie. and is flashing her breasts almost continuosly. christine and i were both in awe at her complete lack of a bra thru the movie.

they get to mexico city and alice calls her mom in brazil to fax a birth certificate and finds out her beloved grandmother has been hit by a car. so then diego gives her the passport so she can fly to brazil and she is pissed that he's had her passport all the time and ditches him. so far we've be in san diego, tijuana, thru mexico to mexico city, and now we're going to brazil. this movie is spanning all over central and south america in a variety of languages. it's great. and they're still going to el salvador too.

*********SPOILER PARAGRAPH**************
the story continues as dolores finds out more about her grandmother's religion, becomes religious herself, discovers she's pregnant, diego finds her again, they get together, she gets diagnosed with cancer, decides to have the baby instead of getting the cancer removed, she dies. this is an end you really don't see coming at the beginning of the movie.
*********SPOILER PARAGRAPH**************

there's a lot of parallels in this film: between diego and dolores' spiritual journeys--as dolores finds hers, diego loses his; dolores and her great grandmother's experiences in childbirth (dolores also does amazing childbirth. she completely made me want to have sex and never have a baby. that is how good she is.); journeys from home, to home, defining home, finding home, etc.

there's also some incredible imagery and flashback/fore-shadowing flashforward interspersals spaced throughout the film. the film quality occasionally has a super grainy-ness to it which is an interesting technique for the scenes it was part of. the story was good, the two main actors were incredible, and the soundtrack was fucking awesome (otto, interpol, the doves, christine took my list of the other bands carefully culled during the credits, curse her).

so i highly recommend this movie. i find it vaguely interesting how much i liked the first and the last movies i saw at the festival and how moderately unimpressed i was with the other 3. but i still love film festival season and am already eyeing some of the entries in the documentary festival starting in like a week. particularly the dan akroyd UFO one and the japanese male host club one.

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