Chaotic Ana (2007)

Awesome Movie

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I also saw "Lucía y el Sexo" and I liked it. A LOT! However, "Caótica Ana" left me with a bitter feeling of a good artist in a pushing manner to impress. In my opinion, this movie has a wonderful beginning, beautiful images, intricate relations, but then it continues nowhere with exaggeration in an evident effort of being modern, artistic, tempting through crushing images, shocking without content. What's the idea at the end? What's the purpose of Ana's cyclic dying? Why there are no elements to underline here character or personality? No, my vote it would be normally 5, but after Lucia y el Sexo, this movie has 1 (awful).

Many people said that "Caotica Ana" had sunk in its own chaos. Well, I don't demand from films a straightforward narrative, I think that the stream of consciousness, the poetic, the surrealistic can be much more powerful, emotional, than a story told in conventional fashion. I've liked a lot "Lucia y el sexo" - It was so beautiful that it took my breath away, and when I tried to write about it in IMDb I just couldn't.Now, "Caotica Ana" .... as a whole it's a mess. In his homage to his sister Ana, Julio Medem invokes the sea, the sun, reincarnation, the tragedy of Western Sahara etc... Many different ingredients were put into this soup, but in what concerns the taste... Some scenes are beautiful and moving, but other scenes feel like nothing. The film is like a mind game (from reason, through reason, to Emotion) - many situations and elements seem to have been arbitrarily inserted.I don't care so much for logic and I was expecting with "Caotica Ana" an audio-visual-emotional trip (the beautiful Ana in different times and places, the sea, the sky. What could possibly go wrong?), but I was disappointed in this regard. Anyway "Caotica Ana" is a very personal film. It's different from anything you may find in your local DVD rental store. Give it a try if you want.

When you align yourself with an artist, it is a true commitment - as deep as any in life. It should not be taken lightly and I suppose the commitment can be as deep as that which you, the art and the artist can permit. That can be deep, permanent and resilient, and such is the case with myself and Medem. There are three living filmmakers who I trust in this way.When you do this, when you braid imaginations a sketch, a hint, has import. If it suggests that it should have been finished and is not, the difference becomes artistic. If it fails, eve if it repulses, it matters.This film is less perfect than his two previous. Its that perfection that first attracted me — not the perfection itself but that someone could imagine such a type of structure. The control over it is merely a matter of conversation. This film has much of that vision of order: nested realities; art within art; selves within selves; symmetries of all sorts; honest giving of selves as a symmetry. It has visual expressions of this: from Caliban's Tempest cave through modern New York to Greenaway- like quantifications. Sea. Desert. But the order is broken, and I see that has put off viewers all over the world. This gives the impression that it is half-baked, that it is not finished. For instance, there's a mirroring of desert Indians and displaced Arabs that doesn't seem to work. There's a confluence of several types of violence that seems as if it could have been powerful but is not. There's a remarkable notion of painting, painting doors and painting with feces that could have become archetypal but fails. But each of these is a matter of disorder muting the effect and thereby making it all the more powerful. The personal story, if you do not know it, is that Medem's sister Ana was a painter. The paintings you see here by the character Ana are hers. She was killed at 22, just when this character is killed. There is a retroactive disorder that ripples back through time to perturb the movie that probably once was as perfect and powerful as "Sex and Lucia."Its that perturbation that is the art. If you open yourself as I have, this will matter. If not, well, someone died and it didn't matter.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Visually, the movie is beautiful. Wonderful landscapes and light throughout, as always with Medem.In terms of the story, it's not very clear, a bit too mental to make sense. I enjoyed it until she got to New York and Said just re-appears like that, and what is that about the Irak war?? Suddenly, the story turned a bit too 'real' to make sense.Good acting all round, though some characters are undeveloped: Charlotte Rampling's, the cute hypnotist etc...Some strikingly beautiful moments though - Ana's recollection of dying in the desert (quite violent though), the animations, Ana dancing with her father etc...