A trailer for Spanish auteur Julio Medem's next film, Habitacion en Roma (Room in Rome) has surfaced on the net. By the looks of the trailer its a saucy lesbian drama, but knowing the quality of Medem's work, it's likely to be far more than that. Medem's films are usually surreal and thought-provoking, and generally can't be effectively reduced to the trailer format.
Judging by the trailer, it seems the film has also been shot in English ... perhaps a first for the director.
We're big Medem fans here, so we'll be keeping an eye out for this when its released (Edit: UK release Oct 18, 2010). Interesting to see the film stars Elena Anaya who you may recall from his 2001 film Sex and Lucia.
You can view the official trailer here, or the much sexier unofficial redband trailer here.
Barbara (Macarena Gomez) is a young coed who has mapped her future out based on the life story of a barbie doll - just like Barbie, she aims to have 3 jobs, 2 blonde kids, and a plastic surgeon for a husband. This is non-negotiable. Consequently she's at Med school to find the right guy.
Unfortunately, Barbara is a little highly strung, and has a tendency to drift into her own delusional world. Oh yeah, and she's a remorseless psycho killer too, with a tendency to off people that her annoy her at the slightest provocation.
Consequently, their university is in the grip of an investigation into the 'Campus Killer' responsible for the rash of recent deaths.
Meanwhile Tomas (Cesar Camino) and Alex (Alejo Sauras) are interns in the Anatomy Department, performing autopsies while simultaneously working on their research project to invent a device to cure headaches. But Tomas has come up with something much better. He's worked out how to tap into the human mind and display thoughts visually on a TV screen.
As the human brain stays working for up to an hour after death, they figure it could be possible to hook it up to a recent victim and see who the killer is. However, after death the brain slips into a low power mode and Alex comes up with the idea of injecting it with liquid ecstasy to kick start it back into action.
To say more would spoil the fun. This is an adult-oriented comedy with very frank references to sex and drugs, and a sexy psycho-killer as our (anti)-heroine. It never takes itself seriously, despite having a pretty good storyline, and often breaks what film geeks call the Fourth Wall, with Barbara referencing, or speaking directly to the camera. This brings a unique and clever structure to the film.
There are some great surreal scenes such as an infomercial on 'clean and efficient murder' that Macarena conjures in her head during a boring lecture, and a suitably cheesy song and dance sequence as she dreams of her future husband. Horror fans will have fun spotting references to The Evil Dead, Scream, Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead, and Silence of the Lambs as well.
The acting is uniformly excellent, especially from the two leads. Macarena Gomez has an expressive face perfect for comedy, reminding me not a little of Jaime Pressly. There's loads of sex and unlike its Hollywood counterparts, has not been tamed down for kids.
With an interesting and clever script, a great performance from the lead actress, and plenty of humour, vulgarity and killings - Sexy Killer guarantees a good time.
A trailer for Spanish auteur Julio Medem's next film, Habitacion en Roma (Room in Rome) has surfaced on the net. By the looks of the trailer its a saucy lesbian drama, but knowing the quality of Medem's work, it's likely to be far more than that. Medem's films are usually surreal and thought-provoking, and generally can't be effectively reduced to the trailer format.
