By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Antonio Hernández
Starring: Fernando Fernán Gómez | Geraldine Chaplin | Leonardo Sbaraglia
Original language title: En la ciudad sin límites
Country: argentina, spain
Year: 2004
Running time: 125
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311072/combined
Michael says: “This semester’s Sunday Eye-Opener kicked off with a Spanish/Argentinian co-production that promised to be intriguing, but for me, ended up being soap operaish melodrama that didn’t live up to its possibility. Hot off is intriguing role in INTACTO, Leonardo Sbaraglia plays Victor, an astronomer living in Argentina, who joins his family in France where his father has been hospitalized, and is apparently dying. He brings with him, a beautiful girlfriend, and an odd distance from the rest of his family. That family is filled with two brothers, in-laws, exes, nephews, nieces, and, of course, a rigid, cool matriarch, in the
form of Geraldine Chaplin’s Ana.
“Director Antonio Hernández keeps the audience interested by structuring his film like a thriller, but gradually, it becomes clear
that even though there is a central mystery, this is just a family melodrama, of the poorer kind. I found Victor particularly unappealing (in a Joseph-Fiennes-in-SHAKESPEARE-IN-LOVE-look-at-me-I’m-so-handsome-kind-of-way) as he is portrayed as a caring, but casual liar who cheats on his girlfriend with an old flame who just happens to be his brother’s wife. The lying in and of itself doesn’t bother me, but the lack of self-realization that he is a shit by film’s end does. And Rob Stanhope pointed out another reason for me to dislike the film in the director’s shabby treatment of the female characters. Now, surprisingly, I was in the minority about CITY WITHOUT LIMITS, with most of the audience liking the film to some degree. For me, no one seems to be able to handle those Spanish melodramas except the master, Mr. Almodovar.” 1 1/2 cats