Michael Rowe
Ano bisiesto

Easy to say "an expanded and sweaty sexuality" as Nanni Moretti stated in one of his films (if I remember correctly it was "Ecce bombo"). Then in reality, you can find anything under the word "sex" and it is not for nothing that there are a myriad of sexual perversions, like being hopelessly in love with an inflatable doll (from the film "Tamano natural" by Berlanga that I recently reviewed on Debaser).

I confess that for the film "Leap Year", which I noted here, I had strong reservations at the first viewing. Only after a second approach was I able to find good reasons to appreciate the work created by the Australian director Michael Rowe with Mexican funds and awarded as the best debut film at the Cannes festival in 2010.

The story revolves around the daily life of Laura (played with extreme naturalness by Monica del Rey), a young Mexican woman living in a modern building in an anonymous neighborhood of a Mexican city. As a freelance journalist, Laura leads a gray life, devoid of work satisfaction and not at all compensated on the affective sexual side. She occasionally hooks up with ogled machos who limit themselves to engaging in passionate encounters with her, followed by no friendly conversation. Everything is marked by the quick romp and off, each goes their own way without Laura showing any dissatisfaction with this. Maybe she's fine with it that way.

And it would go on like this if it weren't for the casual encounter with a certain Arturo, who turns out to be not only a skilled lover but also a sexual maniac with slight sadistic tendencies. Which perfectly suits a certain masochistic propensity of Laura, with the imaginable consequences of the case, meticulously presented by the director. None of their erotic acrobatics is spared, even at the cost of offering us strong, explicit sequences, and in at least one case, unintentionally comical.

Until, in a Rossinian crescendo of uncontainable passions, she asks Arturo to kill her at the climax of an orgasm, to be carried out the following day corresponding to the date of February 29, the day on which falls the anniversary of her beloved father's death (in a leap year). But the lover understands that enough is enough, and therefore he will not appear at the appointment. Laura will have to deal with the mourning for her father's departure and find good reasons to live interpersonal relationships in a more balanced way.

The film is decidedly daring and, as I wrote above, not without comic aspects. I wouldn't know how else to define the scene where Laura, receiving Arturo at home, lies naked on the floor and, at the peremptory invitation of the lover, visibly masturbates while he, with Olympian calm, opens his fly and sprinkles her with pee. After which she goes to take a shower, and when asked what it feels like to be peed on, she serenely replies: "A warm sensation..." Mysterious are the ways of passionate transport between lovers, and judging them is difficult.

Surely the character of Laura, well portrayed by the actress, represents a modern woman with marked self-destructive tendencies, induced by an inexplicable lack of the beloved father figure. That this should trigger suicidal tendencies within a sadomasochistic-colored love relationship is all particular and inexplicable.

If anything, as someone rightly pointed out, the film manages to be as intense and explicit as the unparalleled classic of erotic cinema "Last Tango in Paris" by Bertolucci. Even in this work, the meeting and clash of two desperate solitudes were staged, a modern man and woman in the unforgettable interpretation of Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. The comparison between the two films is therefore not out of place, with a greater emphasis on the female role in "Leap Year" (the decades have not passed in vain concerning the relationship between the sexes). What hasn't changed and, indeed, has worsened is the condition of alienating loneliness of people in contemporary societies. And it doesn't seem that it could change for the better in the immediate future.