foreign films

We had a discussion in my FP class once in which we were talking about a movie we'd watched. I can't for the life of me remember the name of it, but it was a Canadian flick about some Jesuit explorers in the New World and the Indians there and the conflict that ensues when the two groups meet. It was to go along with Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which we were reading at the time, and it was right depressing, as I recall. But anyway, in the part of the class I'm remembering, the prof had asked what in the film had struck or surprised us, and I said something about the fairly explicit sex, because I hadn't seen that in a movie before. The teacher's response was something along the lines of, "Oh, well you just need to see more foreign films." I didn't contest that, because, well, I hadn't seen many foreign films. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that it was, if not the first, then one of maybe two or three. That has since changed a bit, and I've discovered that, at least as far as Spanish-speaking movies, he was right. Most of the movies we've watched for Spanish this term are, at least in some parts, not ones I'd want to watch with my parents.

Now, I think this says something very interesting about the cultural differences, and that's probably enough for for a post all its own, but that's not what I want to talk about tonight. My topic for the evening is instead the latest movie we watched for Spanish, which ironically enough had no sex at all, though sex was important to the premise in a more peripheral and abstract sort of way. It was a Costa Rican flick called "Password," and it was, in a word, terrible.

Of all the movies we've watched, this one actually had the most interesting-sounding storyline. The main plot is about this 13-year-old girl who meets someone posing as a 14-year-old boy in a chat room and agrees to meet him, but he turns out to be someone who is not 14 (surprise surprise), and who is part of a group involved in basically selling kids to foreigners as sexual slaves. Fun fun. There are also hints of sub-plot with the relationship between the girl's mother and grandmother, and a lot that could've been done with her her father's leaving, which is what opened the movie. Based on a description of the plot alone, this seems like it ought to be a decent film, don't'cha think?

It wasn't.

Where the other movies we've watched had all the sex of a softcore porn flick, plus decent plotlines and good acting, this one had all the clichés and terrible acting of a porno, without the sex. The acting was uniformly ham-handed and flat, and underneath all the clichés, there was no real plot or character development. Things happened for no reason. Coincidences weren't satisfactorily explained. Characters were suddenly mysteriously smarter or dumber than they should've been. In short, it should be shown in every film class as an example of exactly what NOT to do, ever.

This would make me sad in any circumstance, because movies just shouldn't be that bad, but this one irks me particularly, because I have to write about it. And when the prof was describing it, he seemed very enthusiastic, like he thought it was really good or something. How do you write about a movie that's supposed to be shocking and moving when it made you laugh in all the wrong places? How do you evaluate the technical merits of a film that doesn't have any?

Answer: you bullshit.

Wish me luck.