3. Los Amantes Pasajeros (2013) Director - Pedro Almodóvar

What should a steward with bad experiences of panicking passengers do when he discovers that their aeroplane has a serious malfunction?

If your answer is drug the passengers in coach, serve everyone else a cocktail of booze and drugs to get people more “open and loving” and then perform an absolutely stellar version of I’m so Excited! then you have probably already seen Los Amantes Pasajeros, because honestly, how else would you have come up with that answer? Add a psychic virgin, a dominatrix, a couple of bisexual pilots and a criminal on the run and it’s your general, run of the mill Almodóvar.

Our feelings after this are along the lines of “what did we just watch?” But we can try to break it down for you. We’ll dole out some stars for the witty dialogue, the hilarious bluntness of the translation from Spanish to Swedish, the technicolor intro to a Spanishified version of Für Elise, and the cameos from Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz plus three exclamation marks for the delicious, expressive campiness of the three stewards.

We do feel like we’ll have to retract some stars though, for the non-consensual sex that seemed to be played for comedy, the jarring scenes that take us outside of the aeroplane and the slightly drawn-out scenes in the beginning that still leave you feeling like you’ve missed a chunk of action. And we can't really judge the acting performances much since we have very little grasp of the Spanish language and culture. None of the characters actually seem to change in any way during their traumatic air trip either. But - that might, in fact, be the point of the film.

If we try to count all of that out, the only conclusion that we can draw is that the show number to I’m so Excited! (the films English title) gets five out of five unicorns (which seems like more of an appropriate unit of measurement for this film), and in the days before youtube we would have kept the film just because of that scene. It is an interesting watch, and we do recommend it for the campiness, the absurdities and that awesome, awesome routine.

But to answer the question that this blog centers around:  

Will it get permanent residency in the cabinet? No.
 (although Paula will get in some other Almodóvar films instead)  

Our next post will be up on Thursday 7th of January around 6 pm Swedish time (18.00).