A man and a woman meet at a party, retire to a motel, and spend the night alternating between screwing their brains out and sharing their innermost thoughts on relationships, movies, and other potentially revealing topics. A sluggish rehash of Before Sunrise minus the romance and philosophical insightfulness, Matías Bize’s In Bed (En La Cama) nonetheless works so long as Bruno (hunky Gonzalo Valenzuela) and Daniela (sultry Blanca Lewin) are working up a sweat, the director’s up-close-and-personal cinematographic depiction of writhing, slapping naked flesh successfully maintaining the film’s temperature at a near-boil. Once the sex stops and the squawking begins, however, all is lost. Bruno pontificates about how everyone can be categorized according to the kinds of films they like (i.e. some are Reservoir Dogs types, others are Almodovar folk), Daniela recounts prior anonymous one-night motel trysts, and as the two stop getting physical and start getting cerebral, both begin to realize that maybe getting to know one another on more than a superficially sensual level wasn’t such a good thing. Even with In Bed running a brisk 85 minutes, it’s a revelation that’s hard to disagree with.
(2006 New Directors/New Films Series)
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