Amantes del Círculo Polar, Los (1998)

reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz


LOVERS OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, THE (AMANTES DEL CIRCULO POLAR, LOS) (director/writer: Julio Medem; cinematographer: Gonzalo F. Berridi; cast: Fele Martinez (Otto), Najwa Nimi (Ana), Nancho Novo (Alvaro), Maru Valdivielso (Olga), Peru Medem (Otto (child)), Sara Valiente (Ana (child)),Victor Hugo Oliveira (Otto (teenager)), Kristel Diaz (Ana (teenager)), 1998-Spain)

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This is a hopelessly romantic film that traces in three parts the lives of two children who fortuitously meet as eight year olds and feel destined to each other for different reasons, who as teenagers consumate their love, and when adults, they have been separated for a long time, try desperately to find each other again. Their lives are compared to how mythical and circular things are, and how one's fate is circular, and how it is not fate alone but free will that determines what happens.

Two eight year olds attending nearby boys and girls schools, who both happen to have palindromic names, Otto (Fele Martinez, Otto as an adult) and Ana (Najwa Nimi, Ana as an adult), which is one of many coincidences that Spain's influential film director, Julio Medem (The Red Squirrel/Earth/Cows), uses to tell his dour love story about romantic obsession and fate. The two children form a 17- year relationship from their casual meeting over a soccer ball lost in the woods and from a question posed on a paper airplane flown out of the school bathroom window by Otto and retrieved in the adjacent schoolyard by Ana, who says, "It is too lovely a question about love for any boy to have written." The audience is not told what that question was, except that one student says, as he recovers one of the many paper planes flown with the same question written on it, "It's corny." Another student says, "It's embarrassing." In truth, those comments crossed my mind about many aspects of this film, as I waivered about my feelings toward the story, as spellbinding as the overall film was, because the story, in parts, did feel "corny."

What's important about that unseen question, that Otto's father says is the most important one in life and Ana's mother says how romantic it is, is that it links the parents together, as they meet each other through their children on the day Otto flew all those paper planes onto the school grounds and when Otto's divorced father, Alvaro (Novo), is taking Otto back home to his German mother from school. The parents hit it off and become lovers driving the children home from school everyday from now on and will soon get married, so that in a rapidly short period of time the children go from being strangers, to being acquaintances, to being brother and sister, and then to being secret teenage lovers.

The film can be told either backward or forward in time (which plays up its palindrome theme), it starts from the plane crash at the end of the film and it haphazardly veers back from there to the beginning and later portions of their lives, as the story is interpreted through the eyes of either Ana or Otto, with sometimes different versions of the same scene being told.

Medem makes a symbolic point about relating the children's lives to a circle, where there is no real ending or beginning to their story. Otto states that every life should include numerous circles and the Arctic Circle becomes one of the symbolic physical circles used, as it becomes the location where the frustrated 25-year-old lovers will meet for the last time, after their real life seems to be going around in circles. There are several other symbolic devices that are used by Medem a bit more obtusely (like empty gas tanks), and one of those images might even be considered prophetic, the repeated image shown of a car stopping short of a collision with a red bus.

The solid story is befuddled with versions showing how the imagination of the two differs from the supposed reality of the story, which should leave the audience scratching their heads to try and figure out what is actually happening. But the straight story goes something like this: Ana interprets her first meeting with Otto in the woods to be an omen that her father is trying to communicate with her, as she has just received the news from her mother, Olga (Maru), that her father died in a car crash. By believing that he is reincarnated as Otto and speaks to her through him, she finds a satisfying sort of solace with her father's death. Otto did not know what to make of this chance meeting with her but was strongly attracted to her and felt they shared a true bond, and that she will be a part of his destiny.

And destiny is one of the subtexts that Medem coyly toys with, as we learn that Otto got his name from a German Nazi pilot who flew a bombing mission over Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and crashed his plane but was rescued by Otto's grandfather. Otto has from early on, had an obsession with planes and will grow up to become a pilot and will eventually meet that same pilot in Finland, who had married a Spanish woman he met while trying to escape from Spain. When he meets the pilot, his wife is already dead, as that is in tune with the theme of the film, where a loved one either dies, is not found, or gets divorced. The story stretches the coincidences to a point of incredibility and becomes more tainted with its philosophical message than a typical romance film usually is, as Medem carries out the argument that both reality and fiction can be likened to a series of circles that interconnect through the efforts of coincidences that may not make sense to our mortal eyes, but these circles are present, in either physical places or in events taking place in one's life.

Happiness does not last forever (nothing does according to Medem), and into the couple's seemingly tranquil new marriage comes a major setback, the stepmother cheats on Otto's father with no reason given except it is implied that these things just happen, just like Alvaro left his wife for no particular reason. The other man is not only also named Alvaro, but he is the son of the German pilot Otto's grandfather rescued, and he will marry Olga; and, Otto's father, who was madly in love with her, will become a broken and lonely man as a result of the separation. The teenage Otto, who was living with his German mother all this time, moves out of her house to be with the only female he loves more than his mother, as he now lives under the same roof with Ana. But this breaks his mother's heart and she drops dead one day when she is cleaning lettuce, presumably from a broken heart, and this has a traumatic effect on him, as he feels guilty about leaving her and thereby abandons his father's new family and goes off without telling anyone where he is. There is one scene where Ana and him are in the same outdoor cafe in Madrid, but fail to see each other, even though sitting at tables with their backs next to each other, which outlines the course fate will take for the two of them.

After her mother's new marriage to the other Alvaro, Ana becomes the lover of someone she met in that Madrid cafe where the fated lovers did not meet, Otto's elementary school teacher, and will live with him for four-years. She also will become an elementary school teacher, as again, things are shown to go around in circles. But she leaves her older lover, pulled toward finding Otto again. And, she gets that chance after another coincidence occurs. Her new stepfather hooks her up with his father, who is the Otto that Otto was named after, and the former German pilot will let her stay in a cabin he owns in Finland, where she will await for her Otto to rescue her from her unhappiness. He is now a mail-delivery pilot, seen doodling circles on his pilot's map while circling around the Antarctic Circle, and is still pining for Ana, as he suffers from his decision to be alone. His life seems to be damaged by his misunderstandings and miscommunications, which have prevented him from being with the one he loves.

As you might suspect by now, this film is not going to be clearly resolved. Why should it be at this point, it has teased the audience from the opening scene onward and there is no reason why the ending shouldn't also be speculative.

Ana sends a letter to Otto's father, a letter that Otto actually delivered himself without realizing it was from Ana, and he reads it when he visits his lonely and aging father to cheer him up. In the letter, is the same note that she sent to the teenage Otto, when she was encouraging him to be her lover and climb through her bedroom window, by stating: "Be brave!"

The film will end on two differing versions, one is labeled "Ana's Eyes" and the other "Otto in Ana's Eyes." In the first version, there is a happy ending, as Otto parachutes to safety on the grounds of Ana's Arctic Circle cabin and just misses her, but finally comes into her arms in the pilot's apartment and supposedly will find some renewed happiness in his life. Though, even in this type of traditional Hollywood ending that has pleased movie goers of romantic films for generations now, the director has his doubts if there is any state of being that can be permanent. In the second version, there is a sad ending, as Otto goes to meet Ana and sees her crossing the street clutching a newspaper with a picture of a downed plane, grief-stricken, thinking that Otto has died, and she is hit by a red bus and dies. In the final shot, there is a picture of Otto in her eyes. Which one is the true version probably doesn't matter, as the director will allow you to believe whatever you want to. If you are interested in my guess, it would be the later version, the story seems to flow in that direction. Most people I know, were put off by this slick ending, and question the filmmaker's real intentions for playing with the audience like this. As for me, it wasn't the ending that bothered me about this breathlessly beautiful film, with its stunning shot of the midnight sun and of the Arctic wildlands, as much as the story getting lost in trying to be too fanciful, playing with my expectations for things to work out for these amenable lovers and then not delivering any firm message but what seems to be at first glance, only, a pretentiously philosophical one. And, by not staying on target with the romantic part of the story, but drifting around in circles, where the coincidences are just too much for any two people to experience in a lifetime, the film becomes marginalized and makes it seem like a philosophy exercise, albeit an absorbing one, but one that is, nevertheless, less dramatic and more melodramatic than it should be.

But what I found strangely pleasant about the film, was that even though I was somewhat put off by the tricks employed throughout the story, I still found myself caught up in the dynamics of the characters and how commonplace their lives were, that is, if you could discount all the chance encounters. This made me realize that it didn't matter if this film wasn't going to meet my expectations about what should be happening or if its philosophy was overtly too oblique; the film had a special quality about it that got its message across despite being off target.

The directors son, Peru Medem, Otto as a child, gave a dreamlike performance as someone who is wrapped up in innocence and desire, which is tearing at the fabric of his being, and he made the story come to grips with what it was about or should have been about, the obsessive love one has for someone, a love that is inexplicable and can't be explained away by rationality or palindromes or reflections. Victor Hugo Oliveira, as the teenage Otto, twisted up inside by the strange love relationship he is going through, was delivering a sensitive performance, as this relationship was intriguing, dangerously close to being incestuous, but was one that was not clarified any further, to the detriment of the film but to no fault of the actor. Therefore, the startling ending to the film became less important to comprehend, because the heart of the film wasn't explored as much as it should have been. The strangeness of this film, is that its haunting use of language and visuals to fill in the blanks for the characters, still overshadows its melodramatic story and keeps the pot boiling, even when you might think the film is skiing lumberingly uphill instead of gracefully downhill and is about to slip and slide downhill in a crackup. But that never happens because the film has a special elusive quality about it that original films seem to always have.

Thusly, I felt caught up in the film's magical spell despite the many reservations I had about the manipulations the director used, as he ultimately proved that he has weaved a tale about the darkened lovers and their near-misses and made it into a tale of haunting characterizations, leaving something mysterious about this intangible and intelligent film that held my undivided attention throughout.

REVIEWED ON 10/30/99    GRADE: B-

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ


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