Review of La danza de la realidad

The film sets up a style of the director himself literally embracing his younger self and talking to the camera and his younger self in the midst of things going on. Add to this his comical intense cruel-to-be- kind, father and his mother who sings all her dialog and you have a unique narrative that is funny strange and compelling for the first third of the film. But then the story shifts to only the dad's story taking care of a horse and this section bogs down, as other sections tend to whenever the older and younger self aren't part of the action at all. And mom's singing gets a little tiresome as well though her singing voice is very good. Music in the film is uniformly fine. Then you get into some graphic nudity, urination and torture scenes, all of which seem to go on forever, and I fell out of love with it.

But it's almost redeemed by a final section where finally the older and younger director/character return for a farewell scene involving a dock and a boat. If this does turn out to be his last film it's one of the great film exits in history.

So it's too bad the script loses focus right in the middle and that the whole thing feels way too long. Might be a film that plays better if you don't watch it all in one sitting.

Visuals are typically vivid but now have a video quality that the HD "photography" that is distracting at first when comparing the richer film colors of his earlier work.

A worthy film that unfortunately can't sustain a strong first third.