Even though, after watching its trailer, I thought this movie would be a strong portrait of self-destruction motivated by the consumerist world we live in, I ended up being rather disappointed, for the only thing I found, was either an erotic film, or a one-episode soap opera with lots of explicit but pleasurable sex scenes, which does not help at all to reflect the pain and the anguish the terribly built characters were going through.
After having watched Salò, I understood the absolute need to show hard to watch scenes in order to make the audience understand the situations a character is going through, but in this film, I found Emmanuelle-like sex that didn't contribute to create an atmosphere of decay, but actually made me think some viewers might get aroused when watching it.
For example, there's a scene in which Lucía -Ana de la Reguera's character- ends up with a group of lowlifes because she needs some cocaine, and after wards we see her lying in bed next to one of them, but we didn't get to see what happened before -which would have been more humiliating and meaningful for the character's sake and would have made the audience feel more concerned about her state- and the director ends up redeeming the character for its faults, especially after showing more comfortable to watch sex scenes with Lucía's boyfriend -which I found quite pointless- a while before.
The subplots that accompany Lucía's story, are the ones that follow the doom of her girlfriends, who are played horribly by Gabriela Platas and a bit better than OK by Ingrid Martz. These stories seem out of place, since they don't get the same focus as Lucía's, and the worst part is that one of them -Martz's- is about a Jewish lesbian girl who's beginning to find her sexual identity, which is not precisely the story of a fall, but rather the finding of one's true self.
The photography in the film isn't there to express anything, and the dialog sounds so fake that after watching the film you really need to listen to some of Scorsese's street talk. Also, the editing is ridiculously inexistent, so there's truly no artistic merit in the film.
The script doesn't manage to give us a message about a decaying society, but it actually makes us think "Hey, it's just a movie" due to the huge exaggerations and some dream sequences that make it look like a comedy.
With an OK script, a lousy directing, terrible acting -except for De la Reguera and maybe Martz- and no technical value, I highly recommend to avoid Así del precipicio and better try watching Trainspotting, Sid and Nancy, or Requiem for a Dream.
After having watched Salò, I understood the absolute need to show hard to watch scenes in order to make the audience understand the situations a character is going through, but in this film, I found Emmanuelle-like sex that didn't contribute to create an atmosphere of decay, but actually made me think some viewers might get aroused when watching it.
For example, there's a scene in which Lucía -Ana de la Reguera's character- ends up with a group of lowlifes because she needs some cocaine, and after wards we see her lying in bed next to one of them, but we didn't get to see what happened before -which would have been more humiliating and meaningful for the character's sake and would have made the audience feel more concerned about her state- and the director ends up redeeming the character for its faults, especially after showing more comfortable to watch sex scenes with Lucía's boyfriend -which I found quite pointless- a while before.
The subplots that accompany Lucía's story, are the ones that follow the doom of her girlfriends, who are played horribly by Gabriela Platas and a bit better than OK by Ingrid Martz. These stories seem out of place, since they don't get the same focus as Lucía's, and the worst part is that one of them -Martz's- is about a Jewish lesbian girl who's beginning to find her sexual identity, which is not precisely the story of a fall, but rather the finding of one's true self.
The photography in the film isn't there to express anything, and the dialog sounds so fake that after watching the film you really need to listen to some of Scorsese's street talk. Also, the editing is ridiculously inexistent, so there's truly no artistic merit in the film.
The script doesn't manage to give us a message about a decaying society, but it actually makes us think "Hey, it's just a movie" due to the huge exaggerations and some dream sequences that make it look like a comedy.
With an OK script, a lousy directing, terrible acting -except for De la Reguera and maybe Martz- and no technical value, I highly recommend to avoid Así del precipicio and better try watching Trainspotting, Sid and Nancy, or Requiem for a Dream.