| Elena (Sandra Echeverría) and Carlos (Michel Brown) are getting divorced. They are both very happy to finally be rid of each other, until they reminisce about how Cupid made a mistake bringing them together and then Cupid appears magically taking them back to the night they met. The Spanish-language romantic comedy starts fast and funny and then gets weirdly awful. | | 2025
Directed by: Roberto Girault
Screenplay by: Robert Girault
Starring: Michel Brown, Sandra Echeverría
|
The first half makes good use of the time travel. The older characters are face to face with their younger selves, able to talk to them and interact with them. To them, it’s simple, just stop themselves from falling in love. The younger duo are inherently drawn to each other, and bring in a very light, whimsical romance to the fun and funny premise.
The further we get into trying to stop younger Elena and Carlos from falling love, the film gets way too extreme. Older Elena, out of nowhere, decides she needs a weapon, so she finds a gun. The pinnacle scene representing the turning point in the movie is supposed to be funny (I think) but it involves terrorizing younger Carlos by threatening to kill him, and it gets so serious that older Carlos believes he’s about to be shot. And that’s when the whole movie falls apart.
Carlos is a lawyer and Elena is a musician. At the beginning the characters are simplistic, which fits the short time travelling rom-com set-up. He doesn’t like her music, she doesn’t like that he’s no funny anymore. Out of nowhere, more than half way into the movie, a disorienting backstory is added to these characters. Now the movie wants to be about grief and depression while it plays around with its time travelling comedy. It doesn’t work; the tonal shifts in genre are disorienting at best and makes everything about the movie unlikable.
While the older couple are battling their demons (and almost literally), the younger couple are still trying to maintain the light romance. It would almost work if Carlos hadn’t been held up at gun point. So many weird choices for such a short movie.
When Contigo en el futuro is an unserious romantic comedy, it’s fun, funny and enjoyable. When it decides to become a drama about grief and tragedy in the middle of being a time travelling romantic comedy, it becomes unlikable and that fun movie from the beginning is gone.
|
