While not entirely successful in perhaps achieving all its goals, or indeed in letting us know what kind of movie it was really trying to be, Monzon's "Corazon" is certainly unique and intriguing enough to merit a viewing by anybody interested in fantasy and alternate reality premises. Thankfully one thing is for sure: with its goofy-gory fantasy combat (reminiscent perhaps of Raimi's "Army of Darkness" although much more limited in scale) it clearly isn't asking us to take it 100% seriously a la Matrix and other "trip out" alternate reality movies.
Ramon (Fernando Ramallo) is a shy high school-aged nerd who plays a lot of role-playing games and has dreams every night of being the warrior Beldar (Joel Joan), accompanied by the sexy Sonja (Neus Asensi). Gradually the fantasy of being Beldar begins to take over Ramon's "real" life, and he becomes involved in an elaborate conspiracy to assassinate the leader of a fascist political party, whom he's become convinced is a cult leader in the alternate world. Yes, the plot of the movie really is that convoluted, and even moreso. There's a wizard who communicates between the 2 worlds (but isn't nearly as funny as the director seems to think) and a weird midget who lives in the sewers (very funny) and is the only one to believe Ramon's story.
It's a mixed bag, which seems almost unavoidable. The performances are OK, considering what a bizarre premise they're playing with. There's the usual "was that a dream?" stuff where elements we see in the "real" world cross over into "fantasy." It's interesting that Ramon has a whole new body for his fantasy self, but Sonja is the same even though she's a strong independent woman in the fantasy world but a junkie prostitute in the real world. In terms of the conspiracy plot, I thought the film was suggesting something satirical in that only a lunatic child could see the "true reality" underneath the appearances. All of this doesn't really fit together in a hugely compelling way; watching the movie is more a series of somewhat interesting and surprising events strung together by the logic of the boy's psychosis. The narrative unity is damaged by some scenes that show us the nature of the conspiracy from a totally different perspective than the boy's delusion -- there's too much information about this political party being shown us that's not being shown to the protagonist or connected with him in any way, which breaks down the subjective possibilities of the scenario for no good reason other than informational purposes.
I believe that with a tighter script this could have been a truly good movie. But it's worth watching as it is, because I've never really seen or imagined anything else quite like it.
Ramon (Fernando Ramallo) is a shy high school-aged nerd who plays a lot of role-playing games and has dreams every night of being the warrior Beldar (Joel Joan), accompanied by the sexy Sonja (Neus Asensi). Gradually the fantasy of being Beldar begins to take over Ramon's "real" life, and he becomes involved in an elaborate conspiracy to assassinate the leader of a fascist political party, whom he's become convinced is a cult leader in the alternate world. Yes, the plot of the movie really is that convoluted, and even moreso. There's a wizard who communicates between the 2 worlds (but isn't nearly as funny as the director seems to think) and a weird midget who lives in the sewers (very funny) and is the only one to believe Ramon's story.
It's a mixed bag, which seems almost unavoidable. The performances are OK, considering what a bizarre premise they're playing with. There's the usual "was that a dream?" stuff where elements we see in the "real" world cross over into "fantasy." It's interesting that Ramon has a whole new body for his fantasy self, but Sonja is the same even though she's a strong independent woman in the fantasy world but a junkie prostitute in the real world. In terms of the conspiracy plot, I thought the film was suggesting something satirical in that only a lunatic child could see the "true reality" underneath the appearances. All of this doesn't really fit together in a hugely compelling way; watching the movie is more a series of somewhat interesting and surprising events strung together by the logic of the boy's psychosis. The narrative unity is damaged by some scenes that show us the nature of the conspiracy from a totally different perspective than the boy's delusion -- there's too much information about this political party being shown us that's not being shown to the protagonist or connected with him in any way, which breaks down the subjective possibilities of the scenario for no good reason other than informational purposes.
I believe that with a tighter script this could have been a truly good movie. But it's worth watching as it is, because I've never really seen or imagined anything else quite like it.