It’s a strange feature of mainstream-art-cinema that a great deal of its more ‘romantic’ output centres around bourgeois sexual fantasy rendered ‘acceptable’ by its assumed ‘culturally relevant’ status. The sight of gaggles of middle-aged, suited-up couples in the IFI feeding their intellects with reductive, agitprop pornography is enough to make one wince with shame at the standards to which the seventh art, in its most revered state, will sink for the sake of commanding the custom of the ever-wealthy, ever-delusional middle classes. The sociological conflicts inherent in this tale of adultery across the class divide are neither resolved nor dealt with with the maturity and nuance one might expect in 2010 (though this film was made in 2009, so maybe I’m being picky), but if you like seeing middle-class women having sex with Spanish labourers and feel that you’re somehow ‘above’ Sex and the City, then this one’s for you.
Words: Oisin Murphy
