This Catalan-Spanish teen lesbian movie very much anticipates the later Cannes-winning French film "Blue is the Warmest Color". Like the later film, it is about a sexually confused girl in her late teens who becomes involved with an older female artist who is much more of a committed lesbian. This results here though in tragedy as the heroine begins the movie in a coma after an accident and the rest of the movie is told in flashbacks.
In America movies like this are called "gay interest", which implies--unfortunately accurately in many cases--that they may not hold much interest for anyone else who is NOT female and gay. But then again, many lesbians might justifiably scoff at some other "lesbian" movies like "Room in Rome" which seem a lot more interested in hot girl-on-girl action than in seriously portraying believable lesbian relationships. Even "Blue is the Warmest Color" fell victim to this latter criticism by people who couldn't see beyond the 15 minutes of hot sex scenes to consider the REST of the three-hour long movie. This film though is more immune to that criticism since there is really only one graphic lesbian scene near the end of the movie, long after most horny frat-boy types would have lost interest. Most of the movie is fairly believable if somewhat pedestrian female romance. The best scene by far is the startlingly filmed night swimming scene where the lovers break into the university pool after hours. This scene is so beautifully filmed and lit, you perhaps won't question why they turned on all these lights if they weren't supposed to be in the pool. This scene really transcends the rest of the movie and eventually returns later as a metaphoric image for the heroine's deep and perhaps irreversible coma.
The coma plot is perhaps a little melodramatic and reminiscent of trite Hollywood crap like "If I Stay", but that is perhaps an unfair criticism since this movie came out years earlier. Despite the melodrama though, this is not nearly as dramatically compelling as "Blue is the Warmest Color" (and is also only about half the length). Diana Gomez, as the young university student, and Ariadna Cabrol, as the older artist, are both muy pretty girls with beautiful bodies even if they're not nearly as strong of actresses as Adele Exarchopolous and Lea Seydoux in "Blue" (but they also both have a lot more nude scenes than than Chloe Moretz in "If I Stay"). Some individual scenes are very impressive, but the movie as a whole is bit slight and rather cliché. But it also matters what you choose to compare it to. It is worth seeing at least.
