GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

chaos-rampant If you don't know Medem - and it seems the history of film has largely bypassed him, much like Raoul Ruiz - he's magical, with stories about stories sliding into memory and yearning. Love is his theme. His camera paints with music. Fiery duende. He's a more deeply felt Ruiz in this way. He had made two more successful films leading up to this that you should absolutely see, then come to this.It starts in a slightly clumsy way with a father and daughter living remotely in an island, then schematic in an artistic commune where she goes, but soon you see what he's capable of. From about when she meets the Berber boy until she arrives at New York he soars. This part incidentally mirrors his previous two.It starts with the scene of their meeting in painting class; her painting clearly a sparrow in a corner of her painting that he painted elusively as just shape in his, his texture of the painting as primal as the desert he comes from, the inexplicable urge that takes over her, you can see Medem soar here. The whole is about tumultuous urges in the soul that rush to the surface, carrying with them memory, image, contact, consciousness of something larger. It is about having known him in a cosmic way, before this specific affair started, as having always suffered for him, this is how deeply Medem portrays.And it always starts again from the middle, with him always already gone from her. Medem employed a similar device in Lucia. It's halfway in that we get this, the cinematic device that gives the story its specific shape of sliding visions. She's being hypnotized to remember. The thing to glean is that she's the one swimming into urges that heave around her, has been since the very first scene. We get the searching for him (he has mysteriously vanished) as searching across different lives, dying innumerable deaths. Selves within selves.This has always been Medem's force; the ability to take love, make love so deep, it becomes what this life has always been about since the very start, meeting this person. Before and after blend. Urge rushes out both ways from a center in the middle. No one does deep love better, not even Malick.But then something happens and it slips from him. You'll note quite clearly - we shift from this affair, from love shuffled by chance time, to broader elegy of womanhood. Fiery, quietly enduring the ills of mankind. Man is now more than this Berber boy she met one day, it's a child she had taken from her in the desert, a father who took off on a boat, an Indian chieftain who slayed her. That was also the time of the Iraq war so we get an angry vignette against the warmongers. But now every new allusion jars, falls apart. It takes breath of life out and puts symbolic motif in - the woman as goddess and as mother of humanity. It does away with love we might have known and gives something broader but without anchor. The film is dedicated to his sister Ana, then recently departed. The set of paintings we see throughout are hers, from an exhibition she was about to stage. It may be that he had already started work on this as one thing (or the story idea pre-existed) and it morphed to something else.

Servana S This is the most intense film I have ever seen. This film has seriously disturbed me. I just...hate everything about it. It wasn't the violence... I don't know what it was about this film but I feel traumatized. I'm not a film expert and i'm certainly not faint-hearted, but this really got to me. A huge part of it was the camera angles. Definitely the camera angles. They were what made the scenes in this film especially disturbing. After watching this I cried for hours and felt very paranoid and scared. I know this sounds really bad but it's the truth. This film really freaked me out. I am writing a review because I cannot sleep after watching this film. The last few scenes were the worst for me (4, 3, 2, 1, 0). I think I was really badly affected by this because whilst I am female, I am definitely not a feminist. Definitely not. I almost felt like I myself was in a hypnotic state after watching this. It was terrifying, without being a horror film. The genre is stated as 'drama', although for me it had the effect of a psychological thriller. It got in my head and it just..truly disturbed me.

andrabem Many people said that "Caotica Ana" had sunk in its own chaos. Well, I don't demand from films a straightforward narrative, I think that the stream of consciousness, the poetic, the surrealistic can be much more powerful, emotional, than a story told in conventional fashion. I've liked a lot "Lucia y el sexo" - It was so beautiful that it took my breath away, and when I tried to write about it in IMDb I just couldn't.Now, "Caotica Ana" .... as a whole it's a mess. In his homage to his sister Ana, Julio Medem invokes the sea, the sun, reincarnation, the tragedy of Western Sahara etc... Many different ingredients were put into this soup, but in what concerns the taste... Some scenes are beautiful and moving, but other scenes feel like nothing. The film is like a mind game (from reason, through reason, to Emotion) - many situations and elements seem to have been arbitrarily inserted.I don't care so much for logic and I was expecting with "Caotica Ana" an audio-visual-emotional trip (the beautiful Ana in different times and places, the sea, the sky. What could possibly go wrong?), but I was disappointed in this regard. Anyway "Caotica Ana" is a very personal film. It's different from anything you may find in your local DVD rental store. Give it a try if you want.

ben-in-france Visually, the movie is beautiful. Wonderful landscapes and light throughout, as always with Medem.In terms of the story, it's not very clear, a bit too mental to make sense. I enjoyed it until she got to New York and Said just re-appears like that, and what is that about the Irak war?? Suddenly, the story turned a bit too 'real' to make sense.Good acting all round, though some characters are undeveloped: Charlotte Rampling's, the cute hypnotist etc...Some strikingly beautiful moments though - Ana's recollection of dying in the desert (quite violent though), the animations, Ana dancing with her father etc...