Isaac 2020

Isaac 2020

Isaac 2020
1h 24m | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 26 September 2021 (USA)

Storyline:

Two friends meet after sixteen years, but neither one is who he once was in the past. Both have partners, but they are very different. Nacho and Marta are a perfect bourgeois married couple with good jobs, but they are unhappy because they are unable to get pregnant. The other couple, Denis and Carmen, are freer and more liberal; they live hand to mouth and are trying to get money to open a restaurant. When Denis offers to be their surrogate parent for the money they need to open the restaurant, the two couples will have to face their shortcomings and seek the happiness they have not yet found, even if it means breaking their own rules – even when the pregnancy is far along.

User review:

A married man having a gay affair is not an uncommon subject in the gay themed cinema for its titillating shock value. ‘Isaac’ could be still in that category, but it deals it in more subtle and mature manner.

The best point is that it gives just as much focus to the wives. A wife character in gay affair dramas can often portrayed as a simplified victim or even a villain. Women in ‘Isaac’ are much more multi-dimensional and frankly more charming than their husbands.

Where this film lacks the most is the portrayal of the guys’ past. A lot of issues and emotional entanglement of Nacho (and to certain extent, of Denis) comes from the unresolved past, their intimate teenage friendship. I mean the title is the name of their 3rd friend for a reason.

But the sequences from their past are too fragmented, too caricature-like, and too shallow comparing to the present sequences that it affects the believability of the present situation negatively, especially why Nacho should become so taken by Denis.

I enjoyed it and could recommend it… but it could have been better.

Directors: Ángeles Hernández, David Matamoros
Writers: Antonio Hernández Centeno (play ‘El día que nació Isaac’), Ángeles Hernández, David Matamoros
Stars: Iván Sánchez, Pepe Ocio, Erika Bleda
Country of origin: Spain
Language: Spanish
Filming locations: Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain