Uphill Love review: Nelson Núñez co-writes and directs this Venezuelan comedy that may have got completely lost in translation.
Playing in the alt.rom.com section of the 2017 Transilvania International Festival is Uphill Love, a Venezuelan comedy that plays like Pretty Woman if it were remade by Adam Sandler – which in saying is perhaps being very unkind to Adam Sandler.
The story opens to young boy playing spin-the-bottle in a living room sometime in the past. Meet Pablo (Jesus Nunes), a quiet, unassuming individual who spins the glass object towards the general direction of Daniela (Vera Linares), an event that leads to the two sharing a kiss as their instant ‘forfeit’. Fast forward some twenty years to present day Pablo, who now works as an administrator for a small ice cream company in he big city. It is here where we learn that his social standing hasn’t changed too much. Still very much a singleton and loner, but very much a winner in the financial stakes – he’s about one payment from closing his mortgage and owning his apartment outright – Pablo is forced by his boss (Augusto Nitti) to attend a high school reunion party where yes, you’ve guessed it, manages to meet his childhood sweetheart, Daniela.
Of course, she has no idea as to who he his, their brief tryst as adolescents more significant for him than it was for her. Despite this, Pablo still makes an attempt to reconnect. After the car crash that was the reunion party, which includes the rather random tearing of blouses, embarrassing dad-dancing on his part, and the lack of getting her phone number, Pablo manages to find Daniela’s address from a colleague at work, just one of the many sinister aspects of the narrative, and then surprises her at home one afternoon.
He manages to win a quick drink with her inside where it starts to become clear that Daniela is hiding something from her forgotten school friend. Hurrying him out the door due to a pending appointment, it starts to become clear to us the audience, and indeed Pablo, that Daniela is in fact a working girl, a prostitute with a pre-arranged client about to call. Undeterred by the revelation of his prospective love’s working arrangements, Pablo sets about tying to win her heart – to much ‘hilarity’.
To say that Uphill Love is absolutely awful is perhaps too harsh. It’s clear that the filmmakers have clearly tried to carve a decent narrative from the classic Cinderella story, but in fact a lot of the comedic beats have been lost in translation, and come across as extremely dated and very forced.
The film relies on slapstick humour a lot during its duration, something that occasional raises a titter, but nothing more. I’m not sure whether some of the comedic tone was lost in translation, but there’s not a whole lot to laugh about when it comes to women being taken advantage of for money. Of course it is the decision of the characters to do ‘what they do’ to pay the rent, but this film fails to mind any humility in proceedings and has no real heart.
It of course follows the boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl falls for boy, couple split up, couple get back together formula, but with no characters to warm to, particularly the two male protagonists, it’s hard to buy into the scenario. There is a small hint of female empowerment amongst the three female characters at the core of the story, which benefits the film slightly, but with cartoon-ish, cheeky and fairly one dimensional male supporting characters, this is almost entirely lost.
I found the film to be a struggle, and largely annoying, pretty much from the off. It’s hard to see or feel anything from any of the character’s perspectives or motivation for any of their actions, which is a shame as I really wanted to enjoy its light-hearted approach.
The negativity aside, the film does redeem some of its failings towards the final frames where the narrative does throw a slight curve ball, but by that point I’d lost all hope altogether.
Uphill Love screens, as was reviewed at the 2017 Transilvania International Film Festival.
