CAPSULE: I Promise You Anarchy (2015, Dir. Julio Hernández Cordón)

I took a gamble with I Promise You Anarchy. They ran the trailer for it before my screening of Neruda and I was intrigued. Putting my faith entirely in the trailer I scanned the festival website on my mobile, realised it was screening directly after my film, and furiously bought a ticket before the lights went down.

Success.

Not so much. Turns out the intriguing sexuality and the pumping Boney M cover were about the film's only selling points and while both were well utilised in the film, the surrounding inconsistencies leeched the interest from the film well before the credits.

In the film's defense, I had only just luxuriated in Neruda, so María Secco's flat cinematography set me at a distance early. But even correcting for this, Julio Hernández Cordón's patchy narrative, which finds two young lovers, one gay, one bi (though the labels don't suffice here), grubbing up donors for some illegal blood trafficking, doesn't put in the hard yards. There are frequent moments of non-sequitur headscratchery and some criminally unresolved narrative arcs. So much so that one is left wondering if filming constraints forced some serious on-location editing.

Not a success.

Look, I take festival program notes with a grain of salt at the best of times but drawing comparisons between this and Iñárritu's far more carefully constructed Amores Perros is false advertising of the highest order. This wasn't what I was promised.

Or, looking at the title, maybe it was.

★★

Trailer: