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'Lucia, Lucia'

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Starring: Cecilia Roth, Kuno Becker, Carlos Alvarez-Novoa
Director: Antonio Serrano
MPAA rating: R for sexuality, language and brief drug use
Running time: 110 minutes
Release date: August 8
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'Lucia, Lucia' has Cecilia Roth, not much more

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By Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

Posted: August 5, 2003

"Lucía, Lucía" realizes that it is so lucky to have Cecilia Roth in the starring role that her character's name is repeated. Still, while recognizing its star's allure, this title isn't nearly as good as the Spanish version: "The Cannibal's Daughter." The American twist suggests a lack of confidence in American audiences that the movie itself doesn't have.

"Lucía," has such a vortex of plot that the film begins to suck everything around it into a kind of black hole. It begins with Lucía narrating; she is about to board a plane in Mexico with her husband, Ram�n, for a Brazilian vacation. He disappears with the tickets as the flight is being announced. Moments after she has begun her tale, she stops and tells us that she's already lying -- it's only about the date -- but she proves to be an unreliable narrator.

The last thing that a mystery like "Lucía" needs is a narrator who's exercising spin control over the plot. Lucía's backpedaling, which happens in a few instances, comes from the protagonist's simultaneously trying to make sense of her life and what has happened to her. After the initial shock of experiencing her husband's vanishing act wears off, Lucía is forced to recognize that her marriage hasn't been particularly happy for some time. Looking into the matter of Ramón gives some purpose to her life and perhaps will reignite her passions.

Ms. Roth's radiance and understanding of Lucía's emotional life gives this film a touch of necessary psychological accessibility. Movies of this subgenre -- in which the protagonist has to come to an understanding of herself by measuring her own life against her previous somnolent bourgeois existence -- can feel vapid, partly because the star has to awaken from her own passivity before our very eyes. Ms. Roth makes Lucía's state a willful ignorance instead, and her emerging recognition of her unhappiness, as new information comes to light, adds a dimension to the material.

It also has two men helping Lucía get to the bottom of things. The able, love-struck neighbors who lend a couple of hands are Félix (Carlos �lvarez Novoa), a battered and elderly former political firebrand who still has a bit of a fuse left, and Adrián (Kuno Becker), a 20-ish musician. Adrián is determined to prove his seriousness by quoting dense philosophical precepts at the most inopportune moments. This pair has a great moment when Félix leads them on a hijacked motorcycle during a chase.

There's also loving support from Héctor Ortega as the Cannibal -- Lucía's dad, an actor who once played a cannibal. Her mother (Margarita Isabel) has described married life as cohabiting with the living dead, the kind of thing that probably lingers with a little girl.

The director, Antonio Serrano, stages his wobbly adaptation of Rosa Montero's novel "La Hija del Caníbal" with lively, fast-moving efficiency. He gives the picture a mordantly piquant ambience, using the talents of the cinematographer, Xavier Pérez Grobet, and the production designer, Brigitte Broch, to add a swirling dreaminess as a contrast to the all-too-real danger facing Lucía as she gets closer to the truth.

And that truth turns out to be a very small and predictable revelation. Perhaps the denouement feels writ small because the movie, which works to take Lucía's mood-temperature, wallows in atmosphere. But despite a few nods to Pedro Almodóvar, who directed Ms. Roth in "All About My Mother," Mr. Serrano is a commanding filmmaker who almost seems a little intolerant with the mechanism of the plot.

Ms. Roth, who reveals a certain edginess herself in addressing the narrative, gets to take a deep breath at the end of "Lucía, Lucía." She deserves it because she's kept the picture going.

FILM REVIEW; Her Husband Disappears, So She Must Find Herself By ELVIS MITCHELL GRADE: C

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