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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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
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
Sales Rank: 62605
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A must see
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: - disturbing
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: - Intense and Poetic
[...]"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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Rather Pointless
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Death by the Sea
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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