I have been on a bit of a ''Bad Movie'' streak, looking for golden nuggets in piles of rocks and raw truth in controversial films. This film is very low budget (which is not an issue per se) but is not very good cinema regardless. The basic premise is this: Malena (Estephanie Herela) and Manuel (Andrès Salvatierra) were childhood friends who recently reunited when Malena returns to Santa Cruz, Bolivia from her studies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is frustrated as her ''calling'' is to be a sexologist and she is struggling to apply her education in a way that she can explain to her family. The movie is basically half sexual tension and half ¨soft core'' love scenes that carry along a fairly weak plot and marginal acting.
I would not recommend this film at all for being a fun watch nor a very good comedy. Some might say it is sort of a quasi-educational film as it does kind of introduce what a sexologist does but I would disagree as there are much shorter and more thorough/accurate resources can be found elsewhere such as YouTube.
The sole redeeming quality of this film is that, though they speak fast, the voices are very clear and excellent examples of Bolivian Spanish for adult Spanish learners. They use ¨vos¨ liberally which is a bit different than much of Latin American Spanish. You will also observe that some words have the letters N or S dropped (for example Estoy becomes e'toy). Another feature that is extremely useful is that the subtitles are exactly what is said (which seems to be frustratingly rare in more mainstream films) to include apostrophes where letters get dropped which is incredibly useful in understanding what is being said. That said since the dialogue is nearly entirely centered on sexual topics and has quite a few foul words/phrases it is certainly not an appropriate educational tool for kids!
Do note that Malena and Manuel call themselves cousins (primo / prima) because they were close childhood friends and are not actually related by blood-- this is a point that is somewhat belabored in the film and I think it is supposed to be a joke of sorts as obviously literal cousins would make their subsequent sexual acts rather awkward & inappropriate.
Fun fact: the main song ''Dale No Pares'' (come to think of it perhaps the only song actually) appears to be written/performed by the same person who plays Marco in the film (Manuel's roommate). The music video of the song features him (Majelo Quiroz aka ''MaJeLo'') and Estephanie Herela and is directed by Miguel Chávez (who also wrote/produced/directed) this film. The song is actually fairly catchy. So perhaps this is the best/only good thing that this film offers already fluent Spanish speakers haha
