On the night of the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year, sultry Alba (Elena Anaya) lures sexy Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) back to her hotel room in Rome. A game of seduction and resistance ensues between the two strangers, one Spanish, the other Russian. While Alba is gay, Natasha is straight. Initially hesitant about sleeping with a woman, she soon succumbs to their mutual attraction. Between increasingly passionate sex, the women spin tales about themselves that may or may not be true. As their lovemaking grows more frequent and feverish throughout the night, Natasha and Alba forge an emotional bond that could either blossom into true love come daybreak or linger only as a sweet memory.
Is it art or porn? This debate goes back even further than Last Tango in Paris (1972), but often strangely assumes art and eroticism are mutually exclusive. Much like the scandalous Bernardo Bertolucci classic, Habitacion en Roma (Room in Rome) depicts sexual intercourse as a form of communication between strangers, but has a more benevolent view of human relations. Whereas the protagonists of Last Tango are locked in a whirlpool of self-destruction, the equally damaged and vulnerable lovers in this movie to the healing power of kindness, love and tenderness, indeed the essentials of life itself. Although the scenario remains superficially the stuff of wet dreams and the steamy love scenes between the alluring stars - lithe brunette Elena Anaya and willowy blonde Natasha Yarovenko remain largely naked throughout the whole movie - are undeniably titillating, the emphasis is on psychological realism, sensitive romance and faceted heroines.
Spanish writer-director Julio Medem touched on similar subject matter with Sex and Lucia (2001), which also starred Elena Anaya. For his first English language film, Medem reworks the Chilean film En la cama (2005) (In Bed) and switches a heterosexual coupling for a lesbian liaison. Once again, like Last Tango, there is the whiff of pretension about the dialogue with its allusions to art and ancient history interlinked with personal relationships, but the arguement grows more persuasive thanks to Medem’s deft direction and the powerful performances he draws from the talented Anaya and equally impressive Yarovenko. Fear of intimacy is a major theme and the film daringly argues the lies we tell inside a relationship can be as revealing as the truth. Is Alba the fugitive wife of an Arab prince? Or is she escaping the emotional turmoil left by the death of her child? Is Natasha the actress, the art historian or the tennis player she variously claims to be? Does she really have a twin sister, or was it she whom their father abused as a child? Are these even the protagonists' real names? What unfolds throughout the night is an emotional striptease fraught with peril. The more they learn about each other, the more consumed by passion they become, the harder it is to contain their encounter to this one night, this one room.
Although the action, so to speak, is indeed confined to one hotel room (“This stays within these four walls”, asserts Natasha at one point), Medem’s dizzying camerawork and chic chiaroscuro visuals opens the story to wider realms while the frescoes and paintings on the ceilings and walls allow them to embrace thousands of years of European history. The internet also plays a major role in the story. Alba and Natasha use Bing online maps and satellite views to explore the world beyond their room. There are sweetly romantic scenes (the girls watch the sun rise from their balcony) and faintly silly moments (singing the old Italian standard “Volare” in the shower, leads to yet more sex) which are surely part and parcel with any blossoming relationship, but it adds up to a remarkably expansive, refreshingly upbeat sexual odyssey wherein, for all the explicitness, arguably the sexiest moment is when the lovers whisper sweet nothings in each other’s language, which neither can speak but understand on an instinctive level.
