The Whispers Before the Premiere
When the film Desire was first announced, many were curious to see what the film was about. Considering the film is written by Erika Halvorsen, who is adapting one of her novels, many were optimistic about the film keeping a raw authenticity about the themes of betrayal, desire, and complexities of female sexuality.
The cast raised even more expectations. Pampita Ardohain, who is primarily known as a model and a TV personality, would be stepping into her first major film role. Many were excited to see the promised sensuality, yet, there were numerous doubts – would she be able to carry a narrative that is more than just an erotic spectacle? Mónica Antonopulos, a more experienced actress in dramatic roles, was casted alongside, which provided balance to the more dramatic sibling rivalry.
The 1970s setting of the movie, in addition, built a special type of anticipation. It was a time of the sexual revolution, the contraceptive pill, and shifting societal morals. It was expected that the film would capture a sense of political passion. The marketing was provocative, and audiences were promised a daring combination of art and scandal.
A Narrative Founded on Competition and Unattainable Yearning
In Desire, the central conflict is the broken relationship between the sisters, Lucía and Ofelia. Lucía, after a separation of seven years, invites Ofelia to her wedding, where the meeting of the sisters sets off old grievances and unacknowledged rivalries. More conspiratorially, it sets off a budding obsession.
Contrasting Ofelia’s life with Lucía’s, Ofelia has spent years living off the grid with her partner, Andrés. Ofelia’s ‘wildness’, raw and unrefined, is unbound by social mores and unrepentantly sensual. Lucía, by contrast, is a creature of polish and control, a social player and rule-follower, though tormented by longings her psyche has never admitted to.
Oblivious to the social implications of the Spaces, Ofelia, on meeting Juan, Lucía’s fiancé, is taken by a storm of passionate desire. Initially unconfessed, the longing rapidly extends to obsession, betrayal, and ulterior motives. With Lucía, in the center of fury, jealousy, and fascination erupts, while Ofelia is caught between the constraints of Andrés and the allure of the uncharted.
The film incorporates childhood flashbacks, which focus on the feelings of jealousy and curiosity that contributed to the characters’ complex relationship. These episodes help to explain the history that inform the characters’ adult entanglements, which are not simply impulsive, but the result of years of rivalry, repression, and yearning. Ultimately, desire becomes destructive, leaving the two sisters unprotected in their most exposed state.
Cinematic Choices: Beauty and Excess
In a cinematic sense, Desire is visually magnificent. The 1970s are brought to mind through the use of saturated colors, heavy drapery, flowing garments, and an overall sense of a heightened reality. The colour scheme and use of drapery create a hypnotic and sensual atmosphere, which is intended to captivate the viewers’ attention and imagination.
The music, which is dominated by sweeping strings and dramatic crescendos, also contributes to the overall sense of melodrama. The score is at times, overly dramatic, which moves scenes into the territory of camp rather than unrefined intensity.
In terms of performance, Pampita as Ofelia concentrated on screen presence. The naturalness of her sensuality and the command of her physicality were impressive. But her inexperience can still be perceived in the more profound emotional calls of guilt, struggle, and despair. As Lucía, Mónica Antonópulos, in contrast, has more gravitas and adequately depicts repression that violently bursts and transforms into rage and sorrow. There is tremendous tension in their dynamic, albeit having disproportionate uneven emotional impact.
Emotionally, some of the erotic scenes are spectacular and, paradoxically, some of the criticism is that they have little emotional buildup. In the film, desire is often reduced to the purely physical when, paradoxically, it is the very essence of tension, anticipation and surrender that is, in most scenes, fundamentally absent.
Pampita’s characterization of Ofelia in Desire marked her reinvention. She has mainly been described as a glamorous public figure and was, is, and has been the subject of constant public scrutiny of her relationships and life. Being Ofelia allowed her to assume a more active role; she was no longer a passive object to be gazed at but a character that fully encapsulated a sensual desire, no matter how destructive. In a sense, Pampita was navigating the very image society had of her.
Mónica Antonópulos has a more developed acting résumé and became the emotional anchor of the film. Lucía’s arc of control unraveling and her ability to project inner turmoil worked in perfect harmony. While Pampita symbolized the rawness of unrestrained desire, Antonópulos personified the ache of repression as it remainded to breakdown.
Collectively, they bore the symbolic weight of women moving between freedom and tradition, longing and duty — essences that echo far beyond the frame.
Expectations Versus Reality
The audience came in prepared for scandal, intensity, and perhaps a bold commentary on female sexuality. In that sense, Desire was provocatively erotic, unapologetically so, and indeed filled with melodramatic confrontations. Yet for some, the film was a psychological letdown.
Excess led some to view the film as unintentional camp, while others enjoyed the melodramatic parody and saw it as a purposeful tribute to old erotic cinema. Critics of the film were sharply divided; some calling it a daring masterpiece, while others claimed it to be superficial.
The film did not meet expectations at the box office. Its adult rating and controversial reputation partially accounted for this disappointment even after extensive marketing and a wide release. Although it sparked a lot of talk, it did not reach the level of popular culture phenomenon that its creators seemed to desire.
Not discussed controversies that shaped the film.
Desire was partly controversial for its opening scene, which showed a young Ofelia witnessing self-stimulation. Critics did not pay attention to the fact that the scene was shot with care, supervision and without explicit material. Nonetheless, the overwhelming underlying debate led to the film being placed in release purgatory during its crucial release window. This meant that far more angry public discussion occurred than support for the film, overshadowing its release. This is counter to how the film was portrayed during its beta marketing phase.
During the beta phase, marketing was largely focused and derived from the film’s erotic content. This meant that expectations heading into the film centered on erotic storytelling and the mere hint of that emotional depth that, it seemed, the film simply did not have. This discrepancy in expectations was, in all probability, the main source of audience disappointment.
Even the cast had to talk explicitly about the discomfort it creating around erotic scenes. This was far more than the mere formal discomfort all the staff on set which included intimacy coordinators, Pampita and Antonópulos themselves.Lastly, there was an understated controversy regarding whether Pampita was miscast. Although she was attentive, critics claimed the film was disproportionate because it showcased too much of her celebrity status as opposed to her acting abilities.
Desire was supposed to be an erotic film that showcased female passion in Latin American cinema. Instead, it was a visually rich, thematically bold, and yet, uneven fusion of curiosity. Many considered it a bold experiment, while others saw it as a let down. It is indisputable, however, that it sparked conversation regarding desire, women’s liberation, and the boundaries of boldness cinema is willing to cross.
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