End of the Century

By: Amos Lassen

"END OF THE CENTURY"

A Fleeting Romance

Amos Lassen

Director Lucio Castro introduces us to two travelers-Ocho, an aspiring poet from New York, and Javi, a Spanish director from Germany who spend a single day together in Barcelona. They speak to each other as they have just met (and they did) and they also had sex with the same nervousness most of us have felt the first time with someone new. But, it is clear that there is nothing casual or chance about their encounter because of their chemistry. This is a layered story and each layer adds to it-a second act prologue of their first meeting and a third act finale of their future give us no answers and, in fact, further complicate things as we see the boundaries and limitations of time and space necessary to properly represent their enigmatic relationship to one another. "End of the Century" is a love story filled with nostalgic magical realism that constantly shifts its own logic, as if understanding the futility of trying to contain an uncontainable romance.

This is an intense and sexy film especially when it is at its most unknowable. It is a profound and casually artful expression of the lengths to which people go in order to not have to not act on their desires. It begins when Ocho (Juan Barberini), a forty-something-year-old man walks through the streets of Barcelona. During the day, he drinks in the city, and at night, he checks Grindr before jacking off.

Ocho is a sensualist who seems "resistant to emotional nourishment." It takes us a while to realize that and isn't obvious from Ocho's meeting Javi (Ramon Pujol) at a local beach. This meeting ends with Javi being annoyed and Ocho frustrated by his own lack of follow-through. But they get a second chance when Ocho catches a glimpse of Javi on the street and invites him up to his apartment. After small talk that is filled with desire, the men have sex with a passion that doesn't faze Ocho but leaves Javi haunted.

The two men meet again that evening and eat, drink and chat but the scene is over before we see any emotion on either face. We see Ocho, once again, walking the streets. He is going to visit his friend, Sonia. Her ex, Eli, supposedly was once in love Ocho. Everything seems to fall into place when Ocho meets Sonia's new boyfriend, Javi.

It is left to the viewer to bring together the story of two men's lives from how their conversations echo each other over time. We see that Ocho who was once terrified of gay sex is now on PrEP. Is this not similar to many gay men's coming out experiences?

Ocho is in a constant state of flux and his worldview changes. A brief queer encounter proves much more than casual in Lucio Castro's erotic, time-jumping feature debut. "End of the Century" is an erotic, emotional imagining of a Grindr hookup as memory palace.

Both men are closeted, though an attraction is still palpable. Javi has channeled his anxieties into an in-progress movie about Y2K that he claims he might never finish. Ocho, meanwhile, is so paranoid about sex that a random hookup in a park sends him retching into the bathroom. Now the story is in the hands of the viewers to put it all together