Julio Medem's 'Lovers' Comes Full Circle By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 7, 1999

The Spanish filmmaker, Julio Medem, directs the "Lovers of the Arctic Circle." (Fine Line) Director: Julio Medem Cast: Najwa Nimri; Fele Martinez; Nacho Novo; Maru Valdivieso; Kristel Diaz Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Teenage sex and nudity

The story by Spanish writer and director Julio Medem is about love, and its climactic scenes do take place on the permafrost of Finland, but the key word in the title is neither "lovers" nor "arctic" but "circle." In expansive spirit and fevered temperament, it actually has more in common with the equator than the frozen North.

The primal geometry of the circle – representing unity, perfection, the oneness of soul mates – is the leitmotif of this smart and ardent film. Medem, who directed the award-winning "Cows" and "The Red Squirrel," has crafted a sophisticated drama for people who choose to believe, against reason, in synchronicity over happenstance, in rhyme over randomness and in the deliberate beauty of poetry over the prosaic chaos of life.

How could it be otherwise in a film whose enigmatic opening images are also its last ones, and whose star-crossed protagonists (the lovers of the title) are given the palindromic names Otto and Ana, running the same forward as back?

The tale proper begins – after a few teasing, cryptic shots of a fluttering newspaper and a woman's running legs – when Otto (Peru Medem, the director's son) and Ana (Sara Valiente) are 8-year-olds playing in a Spanish schoolyard. They meet, as fate would have it, because they are both running in the same direction (hint, hint), he in pursuit of an errant soccer ball, she from the news that her father has just died.

Coincidentally, Otto's parents have also just split up, and his father, Alvaro (Nancho Novo), soon becomes romantically involved with Ana's widowed mom, Olga (Maru Valdivielso), brought together by a love letter that Otto had written on a paper airplane intended for Ana.

It is ironic, and one of this tantalizing film's greatest satisfactions, that we never learn what that letter said, although its pivotal message is referred to again and again. Medem plays this mystery, as he does all of the film's strange coincidences and omissions, with a light touch and matter-of-fact tone, giving us only as much as our own imaginations need to feed on.

Although Otto is clearly smitten with his new friend, Ana sees him not as an individual but as some sort of spirit medium for her dead father's soul. Of course, it is not until they are teens (played by Victor Hugo Oliveira and Kristel Diaz) that the pair consummate their relationship with more than a kiss – under the oblivious noses of parents Alvaro and Olga, who have now moved in together.

Living not only as lovers but virtual siblings for a period of time, Otto and Ana break up when he learns that his divorced mother, Ula (Beate Jensen), has died from a broken heart. Blaming his father, the now grown-up Otto (Fele Martinez) leaves home and Ana (Najwa Nimri), drawing out the thread that carries the rest of Vedem's film to its circular conclusion.

Laced throughout the narrative are more coincidences and omens than you can shake a stick at. Olga leaves Alvaro No. 1 for a second man, also named Alvaro. Furthermore, it turns out that he is the son of a former German military pilot named Otto, who during World War II had a chance encounter with Otto the younger's own grandfather. Ana ultimately finds herself living in that retired aviator's guest cottage in Finland (don't ask, just trust me), while her sometime boyfriend has – oddly enough – become a pilot himself, flying courier runs between Spain and . . . you guessed it . . . Finland.

Throughout it all, a portentous red bus keeps reappearing, forcing various characters to slam on the brakes.

I know all this sounds insufferable on paper, and at times it does border on the ludicrous, but Medem never allows his treatment of the repetitive story elements to become heavy-handed. The delicate tone and construction of "Lovers" is more like a fairy tale than cinema verite, with Otto and Ana narrating alternating chapters of their saga, each filtered through the lens of his or her personality. The film blends dream and fantasy so skillfully with what I'll call (for lack of a better word) "reality" that the whole movie takes on a fuzzy, subjective glow, except that it is not a single person's version of history, but two merging into one.

Early in the film, Otto's soon-to-be-divorced father uses an unusual metaphor to teach his young son a life lesson about matters of the heart. "Love is like gasoline," he says. "You forget you're running low and then you end up stranded."

Rich in mood, Medem's delirious film sometimes threatens to conk out itself, but in the end it teaches us something about the mechanics of great storytelling: that occasionally, despite the risk of an overloaded plot, an artist is able to reach his destination just running on fumes.