TL;DR – A very erotic look at the past and what choices led us to where we are and where we could have been    

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Review –

So when you blindly pick from a film festival line up without researching anything about films you are about to see, there are some interesting choices that you could end up watching. For me, it was sitting down at watching what might be the most erotic film I have ever seen in a cinema. Like I don’t think you could show this film on late night SBS. But while there is that component it was also a look at what could have been.

So to set the scene, Ocho (Juan Barberini) is an Argentinean poet now living in New York. After reaching the end of a 20-year long relationship he has decided to take a short vacation to Barcelona after having to do some work in Madrid. While looking out the balcony of his Airbnb he notices Javi (Ramon Pujol) walking by in his Kiss shirt and well one thing leads to another (this might be the most glossed over of details sentence that I have ever written in a review). But as they are talking Ocho discovers that this is not the first time they have met.

From a production perspective, there are a lot of really interesting things going on here. To begin with, the film is a really slow burn at the start with Ocho walking around the city. Instead of this being dull it has the effect of drawing you into what is happening making you wonder what is going on. Of course it does also go from 0 to 100 real quick. As well as this, the film employs what might be the longest single-take conversation that I have seen in quite a while. From a technical perspective this is quite an achievement because there must have been a lot of dialogue to remember and you would not have had a lot of takes at that time of the afternoon to reset. But from a story perspective it made it feel like you were sitting on a table nearby watching a conversation happen in real-time.

When it comes to the story, it is interesting and intense in places but there is not a lot of depth to it bar the end maybe. While it does not have a lot of narrative depth, it does have a lot of emotional depth as we really only ever focus in on the two characters. So we get to see their present and their past and it is intriguing to see the differences that twenty years make. You do, however, have to work out that there is such a big difference when I am not sure the film showed that very well until someone mentioned the upcoming turn of the millennium. With this in mind the film turns into a story of love and loss and both Juan Barberini & Ramon Pujol portray that very well.

In the end, do we recommend End of Century? Well that is a difficult one to say. This is a very erotic and explicit film and from that perspective, there are a lot of people that I would not recommend this to. But if you are someone who likes a romance film and does not mind that you will get to see pretty much all of the cast by the end of the film then this might be for you. 

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of End of the Century
Directed by – Lucio Castro
Written by – Lucio Castro
Music by – Robert Lombardo
Cinematography by – Bernat Mestres
Production/Distribution Companies – Stray Dogs
Starring – Juan Barberini, Ramon Pujol, Mía Maestro & Helen Celia Castro-Wood
Rating – Australia: R18+;