Review of Dot the I (2003) by Ba-Lua-Bua A — 25 Apr 2007

Easily worst film I saw at a local film festival a year back, this piece of work is just a mess from beginning to end. The central love story doesn't work (Gael Garcia Bernal is a good actor, but does nothing special here, and Natalia Verbenke turns in a decidedly average performance at best) which dooms the film, because everything that happens is necessarily based on the premise that the audience is emotionally involved with these two. Thus, twists and turns come, each more ludicrous than the previous one, and I never so much as gave a shit.

This is a film that wants to have its cake and eat it too: it wants to cater to the romantic comedy crowd, the thriller crowd with its twists and the "discerning upper echelon" with its "social relevance" but it fails on all three levels.

The film angered me, mostly because ammong such great international movies (this is the same festival where I discovered "Las Horas del Día") this sole english-language representative played it safe while pretending it was going for broke.

Not smart, not fun and not worth watching save for a very good performance from James D'Arcy, who nails every nuance of his character wickedly.