Los amantes pasajeros
Pedro Almodóvar (2013)
Pedro Almodóvar’s latest has attracted some bad press – I can’t help thinking the English language title has made matters worse. It’s one thing to make a comedy that includes three extravagantly gay flight attendants miming and grinding to the Pointer Sisters’ dance standard; another to suggest by the choice of title that this is the heart of the movie. Los amantes pasajeros is admittedly difficult to translate: ‘Lovers on a Plane’ has a different kind of unhelpful connotation and, in any case, doesn’t get the double sense of airborne and transient that’s in the word pasajeros – nor does ‘Fleeting Lovers’ or ‘Fugitive Lovers’. Perhaps ‘Lovers on the Fly’? Sight and Sound, rather surprisingly, thought well of the film: their reviewer suggested that it wasn’t a comedy at all but a deeply serious metaphor for the failing Spanish economy. The action on the seemingly doomed plane – a crucial piece of landing gear is missing because the two airport workers responsible for checking it were, at the time, debating whether one of them had got the other pregnant – is concentrated on the business class passengers. Those travelling in economy class are unconscious, drugged while the pilots try to work out how to get the plane to land. In fact, the landing gear of I’m So Excited! is in good shape, even though the film is underpowered for most of its running time. The start is weak and the film doesn’t begin to catch fire until Almodóvar moves outside the plane to a woman’s attempts to commit suicide by jumping from a viaduct. She is connected to one of the plane passengers but the sudden change of focus reminded me of a seemingly random development in an earlier, stronger Almodóvar film which then took the story in an interesting new direction. (I still can’t bring to mind which film this was.) In I’m So Excited! the action in the new landscape soon loses momentum, however: its purpose is merely to tie in to the main story up in the air.
To be honest, I was disappointed that the camp flight attendants – Javier Cámara, Carlos Areces and Raúl Arévalo – had only the one number, especially as they tell the bemused passengers that the Pointer Sisters is only a part of their repertoire. Their performance of ‘I’m So Excited!’ is exuberantly terrific. Arévalo is particularly good: as Ulloa, the most sexually voracious character on board, he suggests a pent-up energy whenever he appears and its expression in the dance is dazzling. (Arévalo has a slight resemblance to Sean Penn – not particularly to Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. Carlos Areces looks like a not too distant relation of Peter Kay.) The flight attendants’ bit draws attention to the fact that much of I’m So Excited! seems to be just that – bits. I’m not sure that Almodóvar himself was sure he had enough material here to sustain a feature. The crew’s various sexual orientations and permutations are an amusing idea; so are the airport workers (cameos from Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz) with other things on their minds. The vibrant opening titles, one of the most reliable elements in Almodóvar’s work, are elating. The details of Fajas (Areces)’s multi-faith portable shrine are lovely and funny. But there’s no real traction between any of these things and the characters.
The second half of the film gets more interesting. The ubiquitous, drug-fuelled lovemaking, among people who think they haven’t got much time left, is touching as well as amusing. What is the point of doing anything else? (This works as an insight into human existence generally as much as into the Spanish economic crisis specifically.) The deserted airport and the noises of the plane on its final descent are an alarming combination: they keep you guessing as to whether this will be a happy landing. In the end, everybody leaves the aircraft unscathed: this may be partly a reflection of Almodóvar’s essentially benign attitude towards the people in his movies but it also makes sense if the plane journey is a metaphor: eventually, things have to continue in the world that the journey represented. That nearly every male character turns out to be at least bisexual is a very familiar gay fantasy – but I liked how thoroughly Almodóvar realised it, culminating in what’s confirmed after the emergency landing.
Even if the characters take some time to make an impression, the cast is impeccable: it also includes Antonio de la Torre (the captain), Hugo Silva (the co-pilot), Lola Dueñas (a clairvoyant virgin), Cecilia Roth (a celebrity dominatrix), José Luis Torrijo (a businessman and one of the dominatrix’s clients), José Maria Yazpik (a hitman), Guillermo Toledo (a philandering actor), Miguel Angel Silvestre (a bridegroom) and Laya Marti (his bride). Something has been lost in recent Almodóvar films, in which serious and comic elements haven’t been satisfyingly blent. Some of the jokes in I’m So Excited! are so bad you assume they’re deliberately bad but I wasn’t sure that all the ropy dialogue was meant to be ropy. Even so, if this movie were the work of a new director it would be a sensation. It’s fair enough for critics to express disappointment with a film-maker of Almodóvar’s reputation but unfair to ignore the fact that this minor piece is still better than most of the new films around.
7 May 2013
