Review: Room in Rome

By Chantal on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 21:29

When I reviewed and previewed both trailers for Room in Rome (Habitación en Roma) a while back, I was overly excited.

The excitement of a movie getting lesbian sex somewhat realistically right was more than I could bear at the time.

The first trailer that hit the net back then was all about showing the sex, but not about showing much plot other than the ‘girl meets girl in Rome and they have a night of passion’ tag lines.

When that second trailer hit the net, I was pleasantly surprised that there indeed seemed to be some sort of plot in this movie and it wasn’t a gratuitous attempt at getting people to watch an otherwise boring movie by having two women get it on (it has been done).

The story revolves around Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) and their one night of passion, of all varieties, in Rome. Alba is the, at first glance, confident woman who, clothing-wise, fits the stereotypical lesbian image, while her counterpart Natasha looks like the stereotypical shy femme, except she’s straight.

Though the women, at first, do not seem to have anything in common, there is an immediate connection between the two and Natasha lets herself, after little to no persuasion, be whisked away to Alba’s hotel room.

It soon becomes clear though that the girls in fact have a lot more in common; they’re both art and history aficionados and both of them, in the beginning, turn to lies rather than truth when they talk about themselves.

It is glaringly obvious from the beginning that the lies are there for a reason; during the course of the movie, little titbits come to light about the tragedies they both have suffered. The vulnerability is visible from the moment the two share their first kiss.

The vulnerability is also what kept this movie just that little notch down from being a thriller; the plot alone would have been enough. There is the stranger factor, the mystery factor, and the sex factor.

Oh yes, the sex factor; there was quite a lot of it in this film. And the best part of it? It wasn’t over-gratuitous, it wasn’t done to just get the masses to watch it (though I’m sure it helped), it was part of the story Julio Medem was telling. In this film the sex, in my opinion, wasn’t there as a climax to the story, but it was there helping to build the climax to the story.