Habitación en Roma

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Alba (Elena Anaya) is Spanish and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) is Russian. The two girls meet in a bar and spend their last night in Rome together at the former’s hotel room. Both have an intimate time together and make out every ten minutes or so, pausing in between rounds to talk and tell lies about their own lives. As the plot nears its end the truth behind the lies are revealed and before they know it, dawn has approached and their time together is almost done.

To be honest, I do not have an idea what point this movie is driving at. All that got stuck in my mind are the plentiful G2G action going on and that “Loving Strangers” song. Wait up. I know you have a lot of questions. Yes, there are many girl to girl scenes. The whole movie takes place in the hotel room. Only around 10% are shot on the street and that 10% are the beginning and the ending. The two women are naked in the room all the time except for a few minutes when they are wearing robes. By “naked” I mean full frontal nudity. I can see some perverts drooling already.

What I find interesting though are the lies that they tell each other. As Alba narrates the story about Saudi Arabia, you can see her tear up meaning she is really affected by it and then it turns out to be half a lie later on. It is the same case with Natasha and the twin sister. By the end of the movie some more truths are revealed but even then you are not sure if they are already telling the truth. The role of the paintings as basis of their made-up stories is also cool. Somehow I was about to dismiss the whole thing as lesbo porn but this aspect in particular got me thinking that maybe the director is actually trying to say something else. Unfortunately, whatever that is, I did not get it at all.

What else is there to be said? I think more than intimacy, there is some sort of friendship to be observed in the relationship between the two characters. There are a lot of sex scenes and nudity but what I see are two people who just managed to be there for each other in a time when they were both vulnerable. Sometimes it is easier to open up to a stranger knowing that your secret, whatever it is, would most likely be safe because you barely know each other. It is like calling a party line to share your problems without worrying about the impending gossip afterwards. Like Natasha says, “everything stays in that room,” so in a way they just used each other to momentarily forget their personal dilemmas, but unfortunately for them, their bond does not leave the room when they do. Or maybe it does, given how the movie ends.

The movie's language is not limited to Castellano. You also hear Russian because of Natasha, Italian because they are in Roma, and English when the two girls converse.

It seems like a surreal porn movie. I guess that statement sums it all up precisely.