{"id":2808,"date":"2013-05-02T11:13:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T10:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=2808"},"modified":"2013-06-04T06:34:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T05:34:38","slug":"im-so-excited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2013\/05\/02\/im-so-excited\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m So Excited"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Im<\/a>
I'm So Excited<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Cinema

\nRelease date:<\/B> 3 May 2013

\nDistributor:<\/B> Path\u00e9 & 20th Century Fox

\nDirector:<\/B> Pedro Almodóvar

\nWriter:<\/B> Pedro Almodóvar

\nCast:<\/B> Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas

\nOriginal title:<\/B> Los amantes pasajeros <\/i>

\nSpain 2013

\n90 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Pedro Almodóvar has said that he has often contemplated making a film in the English language. I suspect I\u2019m So Excited<\/I> would have been the perfect film with which to start. This colourful comedy, set on a malfunctioning aeroplane, is one of the campest films he has ever made (which is saying something), so imagine what Carry On<\/I> fun he could have had with \u2018cockpits\u2019, \u2018touch down\u2019 and \u2018oversized baggage\u2019 as opposed to their less-euphemistic Spanish equivalents.<\/p>\n

On the flight, destined for Mexico but doomed to \u2018doing circles around Toledo\u2019, we have three out-and-proud flight attendants (one alcoholic, one pill-popper and one Hindu), two sexually-confused pilots, a drugs mule, a psychic and a high-class dominatrix. If you think this sounds like early Almod\u00f3var, you\u2019d be right, and I\u2019m So Excited<\/I> recalls the director at his most fun, his most rebellious and his most absurd. In a nod to the spiked gazpacho of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown<\/I> (1987), the flight staff numb the passengers to the impending danger with Bucks Fizz laced with mescaline, while there\u2019s more than one Labyrinth of Passion<\/I>-style love triangle (1982), and the cabaret and lip-synching used to emotional effect in High Heels<\/I> (1991) and Law of Desire<\/I> (1986) are reinvented here by a hysterical song-and-dance number to the film\u2019s title track.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a relief to welcome back a puerile Almodóvar after the knowing Broken Embraces<\/I> (2009) and the dark melodrama of The Skin I Live In<\/I><\/a> (2011), and \u2013 with colours as bright as a high-vis jacket and his usual parade of interesting faces \u2013 nearly every frame of this film is a joy to behold. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m So Excited<\/I> is not an entirely smooth ride though. An ensemble piece with numerous interweaving stories, the strongest plot points take place in the cabin, despite Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz putting in game cameos on the ground. And, although one of the characters is given a key part in the film\u2019s emotional and narrative denouement, it\u2019s hard to care too much about a passenger who spends most of the film conked out.<\/p>\n

More problematic still are the film\u2019s two rape scenes. That there are any rape scenes may escape many viewers, and this ambiguity appears to be an emerging motif in the director\u2019s body of work (the Skin I Live In<\/I> is a case in point). It might be po-faced to get moralistic with a director as irreverent and loveable as Almodóvar, but the fact is that having sex with someone who is drugged and\/or asleep is rape, and that it\u2019s not treated as such is alarming. Almodóvar made light of rape in the early film Kika<\/I> (1993) and was upbraided for it then. The difference is that Kika\u2019s response to her rape was arguably funny and part of a grander narrative about the metaphorical \u2018rape\u2019 of subjects by the media. Similarly, the director made child abuse funny in What Have I Done To Deserve This?<\/I> (1984) and terrorism funny in Women On The Verge<\/I>. But the rape in I\u2019m So Excited<\/I> is not funny, it\u2019s flippant, and, for someone capable of writing an otherwise tight and comedic script, he should know better.<\/p>\n

Luckily for him, it\u2019s bad turbulence and not a fatal crash. Tourists to his wacky world won\u2019t be disappointed, and those with him for the long haul will be pleased to see he is at least travelling in the right direction.<\/p>\n

Lisa Williams<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

Watch the trailer:<\/B><\/p>\n