Complex, Stylish ‘Circle’ Overflowing With Emotion

Passion. Fate. Eternal Love. Romantic Destiny. “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” is so emotionally emphatic, and so self-conscious, that it’s hard to talk about it without resorting to capital letters. A poetic meditation on the price demanded by deep and true attachment, this new work by Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem is a litmus test that will separate the deep-dish die-hard romantics from the rest of the crowd.

A gifted writer-director, Medem has constructed an elaborate film that deals with one of life’s biggest questions--is there someone out there just for me?--in a way that’s delicate, accomplished and just on the right side of excessive. Complexly constructed, “Lovers” whirls you around like a carousel as it ponders the nature of soul mates and wonders if, in fact, it’s inevitable that they’ll spend the rest of their lives together.

While Medem’s concerns have a lot in common with the ones animating fellow Spanish-language director Luis Mendoki in “Message in a Bottle,” the moviemaking attitude couldn’t be more different. Where “Message” is mainstream studio filmmaking all the way, “Lovers” is a stylish European art film that has fragmented its story into a thousand pieces, thrown them up in the air and fed it all back to us in a display of narrative legerdemain that makes intuitive sense even when we’re not quite following it from point to point.

The film’s protagonists are Otto (Fele Martinez) and Ana (Najwa Nimri), and if you noticed that both their names are palindromes, you’ll probably also notice that the film features two Alvaros, another Otto, and all kinds of elaborate wordplay.

It’s not only the words and character names that get repeated; visual motifs and images, like flying and near-collisions with streetcars, appear again and again as well. The film alternates telling the story from Otto’s and Ana’s points of view, but it should be clear by now that relating it strictly chronologically would be too boring for this adventurous a director.

Otto’s voice-over is heard first. After a flash of him as an adult, we’re taken back to Otto the 8-year-old child (Peru Medem, the director’s son), trying to come to grips with the breakup of his parents’ marriage and vowing his belief in the durability of eternal love.

Chasing an errant soccer ball, Otto ends up following fellow 8-year-old Ana (Sara Valiente), who is running for reasons of her own, trying to escape the knowledge that her father has just died. When she and Otto come face to face, he falls in love while she wonders if maybe her father’s spirit has come to rest in this boy.

Being at several kinds of cross-purposes, psychological and otherwise, is one of the constants that defines Ana’s and Otto’s lives during the 17 years that “Lovers” covers. Another is that coincidence (the film, which treats chance as destiny, is rife with all manner of them) is a major player in everyone’s lives.

Making things more complex is that Ana’s mother, Olga (Maru Valdivielso), and Otto’s father, Alvaro (Nancho Novo), fall in love--a development the children unintentionally influence. Which creates yet another layer of difficulties when the pair (now played by Victor Hugo Oliveira and Kristel Diaz) become mutually besotted teenagers.

“Lovers of the Arctic Circle” (a title that, not surprisingly, ends up having both literal and metaphorical meanings), does not hold anything back, drenching us in its own waves of emotion. Because of the fragmented way in which it’s told, we are both ahead of and behind its characters, knowing and not knowing where things are headed. That’s fate for you, after all.

* MPAA rating: R, for sexuality and brief language. Times guidelines: scenes of teenage lovemaking.

‘Lovers of the Arctic Circle’

Fele Martinez: Otto

Najwa Nimri: Ana

Nancho Novo: Alvaro

Maru Valdivielso: Olga

Released by Fine Line Features. Director Julio Medem. Producers Fernando Bovaira, Enrique Lopez Lavigne. Executive producers Txarli Llorente. Screenplay Julio Medem. Cinematographer Karlo F. Berrida. Editor Ivan Aledo. Music Alberto Iglesias. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

In selected theaters.