Boca a Boca movie review

I became a fan of Aitana Sanchez Gijon after watching her in Femme de Chambre du Titanic and that was the sole reason I chose to watch Boca a Boca (Mouth to Mouth). It stars Javier Bardem (who plays the role of Victor Ventura, a struggling actor) who takes a job as a phone sex operator to pay his bills before he appears for a casting call for a Hollywood movie. He ends up answering a phone call from a plastic surgeon (Bill or Ricardo played by Josep Maria Flotats) who is a down-low man (people like Ted Haggard who are supposedly happily married to a woman but are secretly gay) and in his desperate attempt to make as much money as possible, he makes Bill think that they are in love. But Victor is actually in love with Bill's wife Amanda (played by Aitana Sanchez Gijon) who sleeps with him to take revenge on her husband.

The plot gets complicated after that and I will not give you any more details but you have to wait till the end to figure out who was trying to kill who for what reason. All I can say is that it is not what you think. Despite what I have described above, the movie is fairly clean, but be warned that it is rated R due to the nature of the theme. In my opinion it is a beautiful comedy that would remind you of movies like Beverly Hills Cops. Strongly recommended.

Femme de chambre du Titanic review

I have spoken previously about Pedro Almodovar. Another director (and fellow Spanish) that is so much like him is Bigas Luna. If you can, please do watch this movie with someone you love. The sensuality, the seduction, the old-fashioned romance is incredible in Femme de chambre du Titanic (The Chambermaid on the Titanic). While the Titanic was made for the masses, this one is for the rest of us.

One of the things that I have "mastered" as a management consultant is to tell stories. That is what keeps the meetings on strategy and business model transformation interesting. Yes, that's right. Even the smartest people in the world, who run multi-billion dollar businesses, have the attention span of a 5-year old when it comes to strategy. Only anecdotes and stories keep them interested.

That is exactly what Horty (played by Olivier Martinez) does to keep his audience coming back for more juicy details about his one night romance with Marie (played by Aitana Sanchez Gijon), a prostitute who is also a chambermaid on the Titanic. He had traveled to England to witness the sailing of the Titanic after winning a contest at his work in a foundry in the north of France. While much did not happen that night in his hotel, Horty has no choice but to embellish his story as his friends bug him (and offer him free drinks at a local watering hole) for more details after seeing a photo of beautiful Marie. Eventually he tells the story with so much conviction (and adds even more erotic details) that he starts believing it too - good for being an actor.

After being fired from his job at the foundry, he now starts telling his story as an actor in a small traveling theater and gains so much popularity that he starts to perform in a real theater. I am not sure if Martinez was as good as an actor as, say, Jack Lemmon but Aitana Sanchez Gijon is remarkable in her depiction, first as a passionate woman and then as a prostitute who wants her share of the pie after she finds out that Horty was making a living off their one night in Southampton.