IFC Fills Slate Vacancy with Medem’s ‘Rome in Room’

SD reports that IFC has acquired US rights to Julio Medem’s Room In Rome ahead of its eventual world premiere that would take place at the Berlin Film Festival of 2010. Having discovered some of Medem’s earlier work in film school, I can say that I’m a fan of his work and a fan of Elena Anaya, a national treasure from Spain who appeared in Lucía y el sexo (Medem’s most popular title in the U.S.). Anaya toplines this pic which would most likely receive a release date next summer. 

This is a remake of Chilean Matias Bize’s “En la cama” and sees two strangers (Anaya and Natasha Yarovenka) who meet and spend a passionate physical encounter in a hotel room. The original film was a man with woman encounter. Here’s the long synopsis: Early summer. A hotel room in the heart of Rome. Two young women who have only just met travel together on an intimate, passionate physical journey that will mark their bodies and souls deeply. The story unfolds over twelve hours, through the night and into the early morning, before each woman departs, Alba to Spain, and Natasha to Russia.
The room seems always to have been waiting for them. Its ancient walls exudes a magical atmosphere heavy with sensuality and ripe with endless erotic possibilities. As Alba and Natasha enter into the unknown, intense new feelings are awakened, and a natural understanding between them grows giving rise to comic as well as powerfully intimate moments, before the unexpected arrival of love pierces them.
At first they hide, cautious, protecting themselves. Slowly they allow themselves to be borne away, each into the unknown terrain of the other, yet never abandoning the honest love felt for their respective partners – in Alba’s case, a mother of two, in Natasha’s, the man she is due to marry in one week…
Until at last both find themselves transfixed before a completely new truth, a shared abyss, a secret kept in a hotel room in Rome. A true freedom to do whatever they most fervently desire.