Film Review: Living It Up (La gran vida, 2000)

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(source: tmdb.org)

If frustrations are accumulated long enough, they might lead people to make some drastic decisions. This includes protagonist of Living It Up, 2000 Spanish romantic comedy directed by Antonio Cuadri. Madrid bus driver Martín (played by Carlos Gomez) is broke and becomes convinced that his entire life was failure. He decides to put the end to it, but just when he is about to jump from the bridge, he gets approached by mysterious person called Salva (played by Tito Valverde) who offers more elegant and enjoyable form of suicide. Martín could borrow large sum of money from mobsters that demand payment within a week, otherwise they would kill him. Martín would instead spend all that money on luxury that he could never previously afforded and thus spend last week of his life living like a king. The scheme works until the moment Martín accidentally meets Lola (played by Selma Hayek), Mexican maid in which he desperately falls in love. Suddenly realising that he has something to live for, Martín must desperately find a way to change the contract, but this isn’t so simple. In the meantime, it turns out that Lola isn’t exactly what she claims to be.

Scriptwriters Carlos Assorey and Fernando Leon de Aranoa can’t boast about great originality of their film’s basic concept, and even about plausibility of certain aspects of the plot. What makes this comedy interesting is that it was made by Spanish cinema whose authors can, sometimes merely with different setting, make certain stories look refreshing in comparison with their Hollywood counterparts. Living It Up works mostly thanks to a very good cast and especially Carlos Gomez in main role and, to a lesser degree, Tito Valverde as protagonist’s mentor. Selma Hayek was, on the other hand, brought to the film as established Hollywood star in order to attract international, and especially American, audience. This effort didn’t exactly work, mainly because of the lack of chemistry between Gomez and Hayek which makes the whole idea of protagonist choosing Mexican chambermaid instead much more glamorous women not so convincing. Thankfully, director Antonio Cuadri, known mostly for his work on television, competently handles the material and makes sure that Living It Up doesn’t look boring despite unusually long running time for this sort of film. Film also benefits a lot from jazzy soundtrack by Manuel Villalta, making it pleasant experience for audience whose expectations aren’t too high.

RATING: 5/10 (++)