Gael García Bernal's lips can't save every movie.
Another late cinematic arrival to the City Dilatory, 2003's
Dot the i
opens with a steady shot of an elegant Latina woman in a lace mantilla. She's pretty, but we really don't know why we're looking at her-an experience of embellished deprivation which unfortunately holds true for the rest of the film as well.
The girl, as it turns out, is Carmen (Natalia Verbenke)-flamenco dancer by night, burger-flipper by day. But her prince has come in the guise of Barnaby (James D'Arcy), who's quietly rich, has one of those groovy London flats with exposed brickwork, and can prep veggies whilst proposing on bended knee, like the sensitive-yet-hip New Labour bloke we take him for. Alas, a minor drawback-he's about as sexually
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interesting as armpit depilation. Still, Carmen seems game to tackle a lifetime of never getting to be on top, as long as she has a nice set of table crystal. Can the fiery chica from Madrid really settle down?
Perhaps not. During her prenuptual "hen party," the maître d' persuades Carmen to practice an allegedly continental custom and savor one last smooch with a stranger of her choosing. Never heard of this tradition? Neither have I, but we don't much care, because Carmen's roving gaze alights on Kit (Gael García Bernal), an out-of-work Brazilian actor who gives her an osculation to remember. You'd expect nothing less of García Bernal (
Amores Perros
,
Y Tu Mamá También
,
The Motorcycle Diaries
) than a humid, semi-tropical kiss, the kind that starts off shy and then develops into something Mahlerian, a kiss of sufficient length that filmgoers may begin to consider a brief junket to those fifty-cent Skittle dispensers in the lobby, until at last Carmen breaks free and runs out into the rain, all hot and bothered, with her new conquest in close pursuit.
There's not much more to say about
Dot the i
without giving away the farm, since it prides itself almost touchingly on its undulating love triangle and third-act surprises. We're obviously meant to think of films like
Memento
and
The Usual Suspects
, while also absorbing the notion that, see, this is, like, art, when the medium, you know, refers to itself? This is brought home by a goodly number of grainy
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hand-held video shots and pointed references to
The Graduate
, with enough visual quotations to make film students giddy with glee.
One hates to be so catty, so world-weary and fatigued with these Clever Screenplays-but if they're going to be so terribly clever, couldn't they at least keep better tabs on reality? A glaring example: Carmen repeats to Kit the proverb from her homeland that "a kiss dots the i on the word 'love'." He, understandably puzzled, responds that there's no i in "love." "Well, I guess it doesn't work in English, does it," she retorts pertly. Of course it doesn't work in Spanish or Portuguese, either; but never mind, never mind. Newcomer Matthew Parkhill deserves at least a little credit for extracting highly entertaining performances from his cast; in particular, D'Arcy absconds with the film's last half-hour, devolving into someone sinister, gelatinous, yet ultimately heartrending. And García Bernal engages the camera as winsomely as ever, though he'd better quit trading on that disingenuous open-mouthed grin and pick a chewier script next time-and maybe one without quite so many crossed eyes.
