The Ages of Lulu (1990)

Great Film overall

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In Madrid, the teenager Lulu (Francesca Neri) has a crush on Pablo (Oscar Ladoire), who is the best friend of her brother Marcelo (Fernando Guillén Cuervo). One day, they go together to a concert and Lulu loses her virginity with Pablo. However, he travels to the United States and Lulu misses him.When he returns, they meet each other and Pablo proposes Lulu to marry him. Soon they befriend the travesty Ely (María Barranco) and play sexual games with her. Later they have a daughter, Ines.One day, after a party, Pablo blindfolds Lulu and proposes a threesome; when Lulu discovers that she had an incestuous relation with Marcelo, she leaves Pablo to live with Ines in an apartment. Lulu feels bored and soon she is addicted in kinky and bizarre sex with gays in the underground of Madrid. Her erotic journey descends to hell when she meets the dangerous Remy (Juan Graell) that invites her to the world of sadomasochism."Las Edades de Lulú" is a film by Bigas Luna immediately after the cult "Angustia" that discloses the erotic and dramatic journey of a Spanish woman to the underworld of the bizarre sex in Madrid. I saw this movie for the first time in the early 90's (last time was on 29 Aug 1999 on VHS), and today I have just seen it again on DVD and this film has not aged. Francesca Neri is very beautiful and sexy and I did not recall that "Las Edades de Lulú" is the debut of Javier Bardem in a feature. I would like to highlight that this movie is sexually violent and perverted reaching the boundary with pornography and is only recommended for very specific audiences. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "As Idades de Lulu" ("The Ages of Lulu")

Aptly described as "pretentious, repellent pornography," The Ages of Lulu is a film you really could do without. Indeed, not only does Spanish director Bigas Luna's (he of Jamón, jamón, Golden Balls and The Tit and the Moon fame) film fire hugely clear of the mark in its attempt at sexually heightened drama, it also suffers from a dodgy cast (Javier Bardem, what were you thinking?), lame acting and a wholly unrealistic plot. Not to put too fine a point on it, then, you'd be better served boiling your head than watching this hyper-sexual and highly explicit 'art house' trash.On the DVD: The Ages of Lulu is transferred at an anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 and image quality is very good, though in some scenes very slightly soft. The film can be watched with or without English subtitles, and the sound is unremarkable stereo. The main extras are a seven-page essay on Bigas Luna and five pages detailing the now restored 110 seconds of cuts made to the 1998 video release. The main title still contains 65 seconds of alternate footage to the cinema original for legal reasons. Also included are filmographies of Lunas and Oscar Ladoire, two trailers plus trailers for six other films.

This early (1990) major feature from Bigas Luna is the one which – not surprisingly – got him noticed. It is an uncompromising study of sexuality, exploring desires which most directors would shy away from – on and probably off the camera. Italian actress Francesca Neri plays the lead character. It's an erotic, uninhibited performance, taking Lulu from an innocent virgin with a crush on her brother's friend to a woman so desperate for carnal gratification that she trawls bars looking for men with which to have three-way sex. For some, the film's frankness – masturbation, homosexual sex and cunnilingus – and exploration of everything from transsexual sex to incest might bring it close to pornography. But it is refreshing to see these challenging areas of sex dealt with by a competent director and good cast of actors. It hints at the themes which would run through Luna's later work, such as Jamon, Jamon and Golden Balls but without the quirky humour of those films. Slightly exhausting, perhaps taking on too much of the dark side of sexuality.

It is difficult to know whether Bigas Luna is an unreconstructed celebrator of machismo, or a sly critic of it. In Jamon Jamon, the hero's tragedy is linked to his phallic power, but so is much of the film's energy and pleasure. In Golden Balls, the hero is plainly subject to critique, but the treatment of women is frequently exploitative.The Ages Of Lulu differs from these hits in having a woman as protagonist. One of the interests of the film is in the way the viewer is never sure what direction it is going to take. It begins with the lightest of touches, and ends in dark tragedy. On one level, it is a rite-of-passage story (the crucial early scenes are soundtracked to pastiche early rock'n'roll), as we follow the growth to maturity of a naive young girl, from the object of male fantasy, to a woman who recognises her own desire, and knows how to satisfy it; from someone who must tell stories to arouse her lovers, to someone who narrates her own self-defining story.Lulu's greater independence, however, is treated with solemnity and fear by the film, which is also a rigorous exploration of sexuality as site of character, identity, gender role-play, philosophy and politics (almost a comic Ai No Corrida, although this terror of female transgression recalls Lulu's famous namesakes in Wedekind, Pabst and Berg). However, the admirable realism and nervous pleasurability of the early sex scenes become dark, demonised and dangerous the more freedom Lulu gains. The final nightmare orgy brings Lulu to her senses, and back to her selfish wimpy man. Her consistently marginalised transvestite friend is sacrificed so that heterosexuality can reassert itself.The irony of this film is not as apparent as it is in Luna's more famous films, and Spanish audiences might be more alert to the contemporary resonances than I am. Phalluses abound in this still strongly patriarchal culture. There is none of the verve, colour and melodramatic swagger of Jamon Jamon in Luna's direction here, which is detached, yet prurient. The film shares many of the same features as an 80s Almodovar movie, but without the extravagant formal means of ironising the material. The story begins to get monotonous when the finger begins to wag. There isn't much opportunity for good acting: Neri is much better in Live Flesh, though she ages convincingly here.