"Nico and Dani (Krampack)"
Dani (Fernando Ramallo) invites his best friend, Nico (Jordi Vilches), to spend the summer holiday at the family beach house in southern Spain. The cool thing is that Dani's parents are off on a trip of their own to Egypt. Late night dates and house parties are the order of the day as the two boys enter the next stage of their sexual awakening, but each takes a very different path in "Nico and Dani."
This little coming-of-age flick is one of the most honestly rendered tales about growing up that I have seen in a long time. Sophomore Spanish helmer Cesc Gay (who cowrote the screenplay with Tomas Aragay) takes a very conventional tale about two friends on the verge of adulthood and infuses it with a refreshing approach of no excuses, no explanations for growing up.
The two boys playing the title characters are naturals. Fernando Ramallo is the experienced actor and plays Dani as a young man who finds his sexual desires draw him to boys and not girls. Nico, on the other hand, had no problems with his same sex adolescent explorations with Dani, but now is very much into girls. When Dani's friend Elena (Marieta Orozco) and her friend Berta (Esther Nubiola) arrive on the scene, Nico is thrilled with the chance to be with a woman. Dani is not so inclined and wants his boyhood closeness to Nico to continue unabated.
Director Cesc Gay, with his talented young actors, takes this simply story of growing up and gives it a fresh direction that we don't usually see in the American equivalent. Here, in "Nico and Dani," there is no judgement made over the boys' choices in life - Dani decides on a gay lifestyle, while Nico shrugs off his friend's decisions and makes his own hetero choice. The film leads the boys to the crossroads of life and they must each choose their own path to follow.
"Nico and Dani" is a world class teen film that has meaning in many different cultures and countries, not just Spain. This is the kind of little, independent film that has so much to tell its teen target audience that I hope it can succeed internationally. I wish there were more such honestly rendered and thoughtfully told coming-of-age films. I give it a B+.
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