By Susan Thea Posnock
Early on in Maldeamores (Lovesickness) I realized I wasn’t watching a conventional take on romance. In place of bright-eyed, beautiful protagonists who have a “meet cute” and then pretend to hate each other for an hour, the film—which is the official Oscar foreign language entry for Puerto Rico—features stalkers, adulterers and most compelling and surprising of all, old folks.
It was written by Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz and Jorge Gonzales. Ruiz co-directed with his wife, Mariem Perez Riera and his brother Luillo Ruiz is the producer. It features an ensemble led by Luis Guzman, who plays a cheating husband, a part that was written for him. Actor Benicio Del Toro served as an executive producer and it was one of the first independent films to receive funding from the Puerto Rico Film Commission’s new incentive law.
This isn’t a Sleepless in Seattle version of “love in a movie,” but a messy, heightened mixture of love, sex, and hate—blended together with a strong dose of humor. It shows how the onset of these emotions can afflict people of all ages, but it was the septuagenarian love triangle I found most intriguing.
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