Before the critical acclaim of Sex and Lucia, if you weren’t a hardcore fan of subtitled, auteur films from Spain, then there was little chance you knew who Julio Medem was. The Spanish director took a mighty fall with his last feature entitled Chaotic Ana (Caótica Ana), a tale about a young woman’s (played by first timer Manuela Vellés) awakening and introduction to the offerings of the world outside her secured, literal cave surroundings. She goes from costal Spain to shiny lights of the big apple. The picture is a mess. At least the 2007 Toronto Int. Film Festival edition is.
Despite the non-acclaim of his last picture, Medem is setting up back to back projects which come across as titillating projects which may find more interest from the international buyer crowds. Variety reports that Morena Films’ Alvaro Longoria will produce Medem first English films.
First up is Room in Rome featuring Elena Anaya as the lead. She plays a Spanish girl who indulges in a night of casual sex with a Russian man in an Italian capital hotel. The project is a remake of Chilean Matias Bize’s En la cama.”
Pre-production for his next project entitled Persiles and Aspasia begins in Spring of 09’. Budgeted at $15 million-$20 million, this looks at the love story between the 50 year-old Persiles, the ruler of Athens in its fifth century B.C. democratic heyday, and the 24-year-old Aspasia, a free-thinking, sexually-liberated beauty, who was also a skilled rhetorician. A Sophocles protegee, Aspasia turned Persiles’ head and — one interpretation, at least — helped plunge Athens into wars, which spelt the beginning of its end.
Wild Bunch, the French company will handle international sales on “Room” and “Persiles,”
