Film Festival Film #2: Dioses

[bcholmes]

At first I was unimpressed with this film. It seemed like a Peruvian 90210-esque story about how hard it is to be a teenaged kid of the über-rich. It also has a lot of creepy incestuous sexual advances made from the brother toward his sister, which are difficult to watch (and which culminate in his attempted rape of her while she's asleep).

There's an interesting plot about the father's latest (almost too young) girlfriend, who comes from a much lower class, and who is trying desperately to secure her place amongst the privileged, but how she finds the lives of her new peers tedious and boring.

The best moment, I guess, occurs toward the end when the son decides to run away from home. One of the maids lets him stay at her home in the city (she's currently residing at the family's beach house). And he's confronted with the fact that Lima has poor people. The home he's staying at has no conveniences, and for the first time in his life he sees what it's like to live without privilege.

Suddenly we cut to a time several months later. We're at a family celebration and the son is there. In conversation, we learn that he's renewed his interest in school and the wealthy party-goers attribute this to his "brave" period living in the poor section of Lima. And he seems to believe that this fleeting experience has changed him for the better as well. But the period was so brief that we know he's never really been confronted with living without privilege. It's a well-done ending.