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Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781893410794
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 189341079X
Label: Picture This Home Video
Languages: EnglishSubtitledSpanishSubtitledCatalanOriginal Language
Manufacturer: Picture This Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Picture This Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 14, 2004
Running Time: 107 minutes
Studio: Picture This Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2000
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Unrequited homosexual yearning explodes in a coastal hospital just after the Spanish Civil War. Parental advisory: graphic violence and sex. Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, El Mar tells the story of three young friends, Tur, Ramallo, and Francisca, who witness a brutal killing when a classmate avenges his father's assassination upon another schoolmate, and then kills himself shortly thereafter. This secret will haunt Tur, Ramallo, and Francisca for the rest of their lives. Years later, the muscled, womanizing Ramallo reunites with his childhood friends when all three find themselves quarantined in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Ramallo, hiding a secret rent-boy past, bristles against the mandatory isolation. Tur, now thin and pale, leans on religious fanaticism to avoid acting on his sexual urges towards Ramallo. Francisca, now one of the nuns, helps ease the pain of the dying. Together again in this lonely outpost by the sea, they revisit their dark childhood and quickly become tormented by death, religion, and sex.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This film is dark, sexy, and complex from start to finish. If you enjoy films with dark and good looking people with psychosexual nuances this one is a must see. This is not a mainstream film.
Rating: -
3 friends see a murder and are united at a tb hospital and you see the that one is on the verge of a nervous breakdaown and another is trying to do what he can to find a better lfe but in thiis you have love rape and murder and see that sometimes the ones you love an know are the ones you do not
Rating: -
[...]"El Mar" is a dark but extremely satisfying movie. Dealing with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, it is a vengeful look at wartime. It is the tale of three young children who witnessed firing squads and their own friends killing each other.
It is a harsh and cruel look at war. Ramallo (Roger Casamajor) and Manuel (Bruno Bergonzini) are the main characters in this drama and as they are witness to the tense and traumatic development, they succumb to a homosexual relationship. They play their roles with delicateness and sensitivity not usually seen in films of this nature.
I understand that those of us who do not know about the Spanish Civil War have no idea of the atrocities that were committed. The movie is a violent attack on all of the senses. The film is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece which is brilliantly moved along by intense images of war. When the film opens the characters we see are children who act out what they have seen in the world of adults in which they live. We later meet them as adults when they in a sanatorium trying to deal with what life has wrought upon them. One of them is a recluse who is sexually repressed. Another is a hustler who has become ill and the third is a nun working there to heal the ill. What ensues is an allegorical look at how violence affects the psyche in three different ways.
The climatic scene is astounding but not easy to watch. It is profound and a logical climax to what we have seen on the screen. In the film we have a glimpse of Spanish history which takes us back in time.
It is a rough and stark view as it traces the profound effects of war and thus becomes one of the finest anti-war documents we have--the end result has a far greater impact than the reality of the present.
When the three main characters meet again at the sanitarium they slowly reveal the secrets and the scars of their childhood experiences with war. The sanitarium is the ideal location for them to meet again as it represents a graphic plane where there is a thin line between life and death, between love and lust, and between devotion and destruction. It is here that the impact of the film is the strongest. There is a great deal of graphic sex and male frontal nudity and the viewer should prepare himself to see every time of brutality known to man. These scenes are not gratuitous--they are absolutely necessary and the director Agusti Villaronga is to be congratulated for having the wherewithal to make this astounding film. This is a hard film but a necessary one for those of who do not know about the terrors that war can bring about.
Religion, sickness, love, violence and sexuality are present throughout the film and what is created is a tension filled and intense cinema experience. It is a sad movie in which people get hurt and bleed and sometimes a movie, in order to work, must make the viewer uncomfortable. I found "El Mar" to be poetic in its retelling of the sadness and horrors of war and haunting with its violence. It is over the top and restrained at the same time. It is charged as well as understated and the finale is a fest for the eyes. It is probably one of the finest films I have seen so far. It left me speechless as it wove an intense web that forced me never to take my eyes off of the screen as it swept through the history of the characters. There is nothing about the film that I did not love and I feel that those that see it will feel exactly the same.
Rating:  -
I had heard nothing but good things about this film, and when it showed up in the "gay" section of my local video store, I purchased it, fully expecting a superior viewing experience. I'm afraid I was terribly disappointed.
I like art films and foreign films as much as the next person - about 20% of my large video collection (1,800 DVDs and growing) could be labeled as such. But I just couldn't get past the movie's major shortcomings.
To begin with, the plot was not only rather thin, it was terribly confusing. The entire opening sequence had me scratching my head wondering why certain people were being killed, and how such small children (no matter how jaded or exposed to the harshness of war) could possibly be so cruel and violent. And the premise that all three principal characters meet later at a TB sanitarium was a little far fetched. Yes, I understood that the story was intended to show how children who witness life's cruelties can grow up to become truly warped human beings, but the motivations and actions of the main characters were not really explained at all. The main character, Romallo, was so cruel, violent and unpredictable that I found it impossible to have any sympathy for him, and the character of Tur was just plain strange. The title ("The Sea") seems to refer to one short (and rather pointless, when you get down to it) speech by Romallo, and it never really came up again.
But my biggest objection was one I have voiced before - and that is the marketing of this DVD. It is being aggressively marketed to a gay audience, even though the plot and characters have nothing overtly gay about them. Once again, the distributors are attempting to lure gay male viewers with a sexually provocative photo on the box, and the promise of "male nudity" and a "graphic gay rape scene". They act as if gay viewers couldn't possibly be interested in a film UNLESS it has a naked hunk or two and some sort of graphic gay sex. I, for one, find this presumption insulting. I buy documentaries to be informed, comedies to laugh, and dramas to be challenged, entertained and intellectually stimulated. When I want porno, I'll buy porno, and the presence of a pretty face / body in a movie will not get my attention for that fact alone.
And, unlike some reviewers at other sites, I did not think this film was a step up from the director's previous film, In A Glass Cage, which, although far more twisted and bizarre than El Mar, had an element of creepy suspense that at least kept my interest. The plot of El Mar was actually rather boring, and the fact that the characters actions made little sense did not help.
I will say that El Mar is beautifully filmed, and the acting is really very good. But that just wasn't enough to save it for me.
Rating: -
Some films impress you with the cinematography and the finely honed camera skills of the director. Other motion pictures stun their audiences with shocking scripts and intense, brilliant acting. El Mar manages to impress, stun, and shock its viewers with a really daring, intrepid and brutal precision. This is not a movie you'll soon forget!
This is not something to watch if you're looking for light entertainment. It is violently bleak and nhilistic. The director used his camera as a great poet would his pen.
It is a really fine film, but I cannot honestly say I liked it. I was surprised at the integrity of the story. You can be sure this is a script that was true to its roots. It certainly wasn't edited in a way to appeal to a mainstream audience. Yet, as others have noted, the script proved problematic for me because it proved the weakest thread in the tapestry. Some of the actions of the characters, for example, didn't really seem plausible and were rather extreme. Also, there are some films where you get the feeling the writers were just being dark to the point of being ghoulish. I half expected the poor nun to hang herself from the cord hanging from the window at the end of the film just because it appeared the most extreme action she could take.
I think any other director would have made this film unwatchable. I look forward to seeing more of this director's work.
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