Bittersweet strikes again – aesthetically pleasing formula with quality sweetened taste. The term has the advantage that it can be applied to just about anything, as soon as one thinks of distinguishing the subtle effects of lisp (“douzamère”) in a captivating and slightly disillusioned story. The marshmallow has, at least it, the merit of not misleading on the goods: it disgusts. And that can be an interesting feeling to film. The “douzamère” is more insidious, the aesthetic form of the at the same time, salty-sweet, it tingles and it caresses, and everything ends up being worthy in the aftertaste, the cutesy. The Time.news of The strong ones comes to us from Chile, crowned with great successes in queer festivals, and she opts for the bittersweet love between men.
Lucas and Antonio meet during the stopover of the first at his sister who lives in Niebla, a small fishing port at the southern tip of Chile, before flying away definitively for Montreal. Antonio is a fisherman, a desirable and available labor force. The idyll between them is born without haste, in long stolen kisses and local bingo evenings, in rising caresses like the tide. Will Lucas resolve to leave despite everything? To dramatize this slack dilemma, the radio even blared, during one of the too many pick-up journeys, of the Mexican version of Travel Travel of Desireless (heard recently already in Compartment no. 6 de Juho Kuosmanen).
The two lovers are thus very distinct and very magnetic, bitter and sweet: the intellectual and the manual, the local child and the accidental tourist, the one who poses in front of the sea (background, moods, sweetness of the chromo gay) and the one that sails on the sea (worktop, bitterness of the spray and homosensuality of the men of the sea). The strong ones done in the rustic trendy twelfth century, seaside home and log cabin of love, shelter from hugs. Even the routine is rustic: filming work, filming sex, filming feelings. So is it of the same order and if one is filmed moderately – work or sex or love – are we sure that the rest will be the same, filmed moderately? Have The strong ones, it would seem. One walks there while sniffing the atmosphere, indolently tourist cinema, skirting landscapes and feelings without encumbers nor jolts.