Cielo despejado

I saw El Búfalo de la Noche (The Buffalo of the Night) today, a movie I'd been looking forward for months, and I'm sorry to say it disappointed me. It hardly feels like Guillermo Arriaga's writing (the man who wrote Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel) - it felt clumsy, amateur-ish. The worst of it, though? The gratuitous sex scenes. Seriously, it's like someone's taking their clothes off every five seconds, with no motivation whatsoever (all Camila Sodi does is get naked for five minutes, talk for two of them and THAT'S IT. That's ALL she does in the entire movie, ugh), and while it was nice to see Diego Luna's bits, yes, I'm shallow like that, it just gets boring when it's not helping to the story at all.

So yes. It had lots of potential, because the characters are pretty interesting (especially Gregorio) and there's some subplots that are honestly intriguing but they fall flat and they're never developed. The premise is: Gregorio's girlfriend, Tania, cheats on him with his best friend, Manuel, while Gregorio's locked away at a psychiatric hospital, and when he finds out, he kills himself. Days later, Manuel gets a letter written in Gregorio's handwriting. It could've been such a good mystery, and all of the characters are deliciously insane (literally), but it just didn't live up to my (or anyone's) expectations. It's not a bad movie per se - it's still better than most of the crap in the cinemas right now - but it's not that good either.

For all that Guillermo Arriaga keeps on bitching on and on about not needing Alejandro Gonzáles Inárritu's directing to shine, he's done a piss poor job of convincing me.