End of the Century

A love story with a time shift twist - just confusing enough to make it interesting, intriguing and thought provoking. Updated version of "Sliding Doors" as it explores what could have been Warm and entertaining, well acted in a relaxed, believable way.

Lovely shots of Barcelona too.

How would your life be different if you took a different relationship path? That's what gets explored in this poignant film.

The director and cinematographer use long, beautiful (and mostly silent) visual narratives to create a sense of isolation for the main character who has recently ended a 20 year relationship.

Using flashback/flashforward scenes, the film explores what happens when two men meet again after a hook up that took place 20 years prior.

A great movie touching on the topic "What if?" which most of us can relate to. Felt that the characters had great chemistry and the story leaves you thinking. Very enjoyable to watch and good job by the director to tell an authentic and refreshing story.

In my humble discernment, the key to making sense of this movie and of its many twists and turns of time and the many ambiguities of the story lines, is that much of the story happens in Ocho's imagination.. If we assume the long, plodding initial scenes depicting Ocho's arrival in Barcelona are real, of his reacting to solitude and loneliness by listlessly wandering the streets, staring vacantly at nothing in particular, until he notices Javi in the plaza below and then later at the beach. At that point the story picks up and grows increasingly intricate and complicated. The ambiguity of the story, however, questions how much of the story actually happened and how much is just Ocho's imagination, just a continuation of his introspective mind through the preceding opening scenes up to that point. How much of the story is actual history and how much is fantasy? It's no surprise that Ocho's and Javi's appearance didn't change during 20 years, if in fact 20 years never went by except in Ocho's mind. Whether the details of the story are real or fantasized, this film tells a true story of the odyssey of a heart as a lonely hunter in quest of a loving human connection. A beautiful film.

Do you think a one-night stand can become the kind of true love we all need to build a life together, even start your own family? That is what "End of The Century" (probably) is about. We are here faced with a bizzarre, interesting and brave narrative choice - the film maker introduces us to the two main characters by some sort of imbalance between past, present and future. The challenge is certainly bold, the viewer has to keep up with the continuous timeline change, but this is what makes the movie intriguing and appreciable. The idea is to turn the emerging love story of these two guys into a whole path of life, made with fading memories of what it was, uncertainties of what it will be, and a brisk concreteness of contemporary living. The two characters are well-defined, their lives converge and diverge during these different story arcs, and the whole plot can be considered cute, simple but wacky. Notwithstanding the appearance and facial features of the two guys seem not so suffer from the flowing of time (at all), we find an average result in our hands - a movie that is nice, unpretentious, genuine and quite pleasant to watch.