Austin360 Movies: 'Lucia, Lucia' Reviews -- Philadelphia Inquirer

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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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Woman on the verge of transcending

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Her movie 'Lucía, Lucía' is a retread of 'Romancing the Stone,' but Cecilia Roth is a gem

By Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted: August 5, 2003

Cecilia Roth, the sage, sexy star of Pedro Almodóvar's "All About My Mother," is the best reason -- the only reason -- to see "Lucía, Lucía." A forced, freewheeling mystery-comedy about a Mexico City wife in the throes of a midlife crisis, the pic is clunky and unsurprising.

In the title role (or half the title role, to be precise), Roth is a children's book writer drawn into a complicated kidnapping caper when her husband disappears at the airport. An elderly but endlessly energetic former Castro compatriot, F�lix (Carlos Álvarez Novoa), appears at the tearful Lucía's door to help her find her husband. So does another neighbor in the apartment building -- the young, studly Adrián (Kuno Becker), who is eager to get into a younger-man-older-woman thing with our distraught heroine.

There's something in Roth's performance that recalls Kathleen Turner in "Romancing the Stone" -- and certainly writer-director Antonio Serrano's plot, with its repressed writer propelled into breathless action and adventure, echoes the 1984 hit as well.

But there's also something flat and labored about the whole affair, with its screwball intrigue that brings the mob, the police, and top government officials into the action with Lucía and her two companions.

While Roth appears understandably exhausted by all the running around that her character must endure, there's a spark missing from her eyes that speaks to a greater weariness -- with the script, perhaps, and the company she finds herself in.