Leo's Room (2010)

You won't be disappointed!

It is a performances centric movie

Absolutely Fantastic

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I watched it because I wanted to watch the handsome actor who plays Leo and see what the movie was about. I stuck with the movie because I kept waiting for something interesting to happen and Leo is cute (but his lover Seba was even cuter than him, although skeevy.) Leo's character as it turns out is so annoyingly vague and directionless that it detracts from the whole movie and from his own attractiveness. Additionally, this movie is too drawn out and tedious. It spends way too much time with cameras lingering uncomfortably and pointlessly on the actors' faces which, although pretty, are often bland and unexpressive. We're supposed to be reading their thoughts I guess? But it doesn't happen because they ruminate but don't emote. The ending was somehow predictable yet quite unsatisfying and too open ended for me. If I had to watch these annoying characters try to figure out their lives all that time, the least the ending could have provided was some kind of definitive resolution for one of them. Caro seems healed, and so Leo takes a road trip but who cares? Does he ever get back with Seba? Does he ever explain to Caro why he can't reciprocate her feelings for him? Does he ever tell anybody that he's gay or bisexual? Yawn. I would only sit through this again if I wanted to look at Leo's and Seba's faces but more than likely, it will never happen because I would just fall asleep in 10 minutes upon re-watch.

This is an absolutely first rate film from beginning to end. It grabs you and never lets go. You become completely wrapped up in the story and the characters and you really care about what happens to them and what is happening in general. The cast is perfect and probably the biggest secret to film success is successful casting and this film has it in spades. The ending, which apparently some here do not care for is carefully worked out if you pay attention to the clues that crop up on the way to the ending. There are definite signs in the road that lead you to only one conclusion which will in the end make everyone happy. I won't give it away because that would be a spoiler but one thing I will say is that I was shocked this gem of a film came from a Latin American country so remote I didn't even know it existed, but that's what makes film so exciting because even the least known places on the planet can make a name for themselves in the international film market and this film definitely does that.

They say that avocados are an acquire taste, the same we can say about this type of movies. The slow timing, the great length of the scenes with a lot of silences, very scarce dialog, the favorite way to make movies by Ingmar Bergman, by Antonioni... you really have to accept those premises if you decide to watch this film.It has a great deal of excellence thanks to everybody involved in it, since obviously they filmed it with a very restricted budget. It seems the lighting they used was the natural ambiance light and if the scene came out too dark, too bad, no way they would re shoot it, but exactly those no-no's (for a Hollywood production) helped in this case to get the necessary atmosphere to develop the story with great intimacy and naturalness. It was filmed, practically, as a documentary.All the actors were true professionals, save, maybe, the mother of the protagonist, that for some reason gave a wrong feeling to her phrasing, almost as if she was reading the lines.I truly believe that this movie could benefit enormously if they take it back to the editing room and cut about half an hour, because some of the scenes are unnecessarily too long for no reason whatsoever.*****Spoilers ahead *****I have the feeling at the conclusion of the story, that the director --or the producer or whoever decided about the ending-- panicked with the idea that the protagonist would end up being homosexual and happy as such, so they decided all of a sudden, after all that inner torture and knuckle biting throughout the whole movie, that, after all, our guy happened to be heterosexual (bisexual?) but since the ending is left totally open we'll never know what his true sexual orientation was.

I ran into this movie waiting for something from normal to good, but it turned out to be much more than that. In a nutshell, I would describe it as very sweet, simple and true. It is sweet because the ties (loving or friendship)are formed in a calm pace, slowly enough to be enjoyed. The central problem - the self-discovering process, is presented in a very simple way, which make the story seem natural and almost true, that's hard to find in the most part of gay-themed movies. If those are not convincing reasons to watch "El Cuarto de Leo" than don't forget how cute is Martín Rodríguez (Leo)and the Argentines' (and Uruguayans') charm; the soundtrack is awesome as well.That's all. Enjoy it!