Kiki, Love to Love

I went in only knowing the name of the movie, and certainly did not expect what emerged! At first, it seemed that the movie was going to be a catalogue of sexual idiosyncracies (kinks would be too strong and judgmental a word). One woman is only turned on by a man crying, another needs to be attacked, her sister is turned on by plants, a bloke is only aroused by sleeping women... 

That could have been tedious, but the movie settled in on about half a dozen couples (and a couple of singles), and shows how each works through the particular thing which is complicating their relationship. Natalie and Alex (the real first names of the actors playing them) are first up: she confesses that in a service station hold-up, when she was being held captive, she found it to be incredibly erotically charged. Initially, it seemed that Alex wouldn't handle the threat to his manhood by her being more turned on by another man, but he goes with the flows and tries to stage a couple of incidents in which he "attacks" her: in one, he is so successful that she fights back. Oops! This leads to a scene that had several members of the audience so pleased that they whimpered.

José Luis loves to watch his wife, Palomar, sleep and gets aroused - she hates it. His solution is to tranquilise himself to avoid the problem, but she takes the dose by mistake. He takes advantage of the situation, several times, and has to pay off the housekeeper with breast augmentation to keep her silent. That is, until Palomar confronts him about the lingerie, erotic oils etc he has put on the credit card and accuses him of having an affair with a younger, prettier woman. He is quite honestly able to deny it, says that he is very much in love with the woman with whom he's having an affair - its that sort of movie, following the normal arc of a romantic comedy.

There is actually a kink club: Paco and Ana go there to spice things up, and each has an unusual experience - Paco's more than hers. A bloke with a big manly body and voice pleads with him to, ah, urinate on him.

My favourite was Sandra: she is deaf and has a compulsion for silk. She has a very awkward date with a bloke wearing a polyester shirt - he might have even made it to a second date if he hadn't reacted so badly when her large iguana appear on the sofa. So she carries on alone, troubled by men in public wearing silk shirts. Her work is translating skype calls with deaf people into phone calls with hearing people - one client wants her to act as translator for a phone sex operator - this goes badly, but Sandra and the client hit it off.

The end of the movie is a bit contrived - there's a fiesta, and all of the couples in the movie converge - but I guess its a suitable way to celebrate the oddities of human nature.