A shaggy, sexy man enters a café to meet a handsome groomed man in a buttoned down suit. Aside from their general attractiveness, they appear to have nothing in common. "I've been meaning to call you." "You shouldn't have bothered." Isaac then cuts to the man in the suit driving through fields of dried up grape vines. He looks into the rearview mirror and Isaac cuts to three teenage boys frolicking in homoerotic innocence. His reverie is cut short by his cell ringing. It is his wife wondering why he is late. At this point I settled in expecting a variation on a coming out story or a long lost love reunion. It was too soon to tell if it would be romantic or tragic or comic, but when it is in Spanish with passionate actors it was bound to be intense and easy on the eyes. Isaac is.
While the gay elements are central to Isaac, the film is actually a four hander that is less concerned with carnal or emotional desires than it is with how pleasing others and ignoring personal desires is destructive. We meet Marta (Maria Ribera) who is the suit's wife. She lies by a swimming pool, which will become the metaphor it portends, with her mother who wants a grandchild. In the grand tradition of meddling grande dames she clutches a cocktail and pronounces that "Children settle us and give us social strength," a statement Marta will echo. She also advises Marta that "It is best to tell white and half lies and let men think it was their idea." Tragically the mother then disappears from the narrative and my hopes that she would reappear to offer more succinct quips and analysis were for nought. Marta doesn't really want a child. She thinks a dog would be sufficient.
Nacho (Pepe Ocio), the suit and Marta's husband, does want a child. Mainly to further his father-in-law's ambitions. Nacho is running for an unspecified political position. And, as we have already guessed, he wants Denis (Ivan Sanchez). Denis wants to open a restaurant where he can create "food full of memories and feelings." While Denis's penchant for being shirtless (and occasionally less) is fairly PG, the food porn he creates, and which the camera lingers over, is deliciously X-rated. Denis is in a relationship with Carmen (Erika Bleda) who is a glamorous nightclub singer who wants to be a seamstress with her own shop. She also wants Denis but, more importantly, wants him to want her. Nacho's plan to finance Denis's dream restaurant in exchange for Carmen becoming his and Marta's surrogate, sets the plot in motion.
Alliances shift, secrets are revealed, and intimacy turns out to be a negotiating tactic. Sex and love are also transactional, but betrayal is universal. Isaac was originally a stage play by Antonio Hernandez Centeno but, aside from the oblique and acidic dialogue, the film creates a language all its own. Directors Angeles Hernandez and David Matamoros (also credited as two-thirds of the screenplay) keep the characters in motion, intercutting and placing them with spatial resonance. A pivotal brief butt fuck is not only contrasted with Marta's reactions, but also with a choreographed line dance by the rest of the oblivious party goers. This dovetails cleverly with a Hitchcockian green screen scene in a car where the reactions are delightfully unexpected and set up a happy ending that is far from cathartic. As Denis states, "I'll fuck whoever I want, but I'll be alone."
Isaac also contains a fair amount of self-psychoanalyzation that mainly becomes, in the manner of the privileged, self-justification. Everyone's parents get blamed for quirks, foibles and emotional dysfunction (except for Marta's mother who is simply too fabulous and only briefly onscreen). Sanchez has a great time as the sexual centrepiece and it is easy to believe that he is a sensual dynamo. But Bleda steals every scene she is in with a wide-eyed determination and a quivering lip. And her character has the most to lose. The flashbacks, often paralleling, to the three boys are integral to the story but the big reveal is telegraphed, cliché and could have used a little more sexual nerve. In all the interactions, the seduction is paramount and the sex itself is either off screen or brief and brutish. Isaac, like Denis's culinary creations, is candy-coloured nihilism but the mother proves to be right, as mother's always are.
RELATED ARTICLES / ARCHIVE: