It’s hard to believe, but at a time when Puritanism and cinema are living their longest and most fruitful romance in recent decades, and eroticism has disappeared not as a genre but as a narrative element or a simple recreational ingredient (perhaps because of the dangerous taboo of objectification; when a nude vivifies the person, man or woman, it does not take away life, it does not turn it into inert flesh), more films we find on the billboard that they celebrate a supposed sexual revolution which is definitely more symbolic than real.
‘Powder love’, ‘Sentimental’ or ‘Polyamory for beginners’, of varying interest and different claims, and now there is ‘Where two fit’, which achieves by a wide margin the debatable merit of being The most puritanical and white swinger comedy ever made.
All these comedies drink to a greater or lesser extent from the elongated shadow of the magnificent and foundational ‘Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice’ (Paul Mazursky, 1969). It is surprising, to say the least, that what was scandalous at the end of the sixties continues to be sold as such after fifty years.
Good feeling sex movie: in the valley of blurred nudes
Knowing that surpassing Mazursky are major words, these Erotic comedies free of eroticism, with speech but without skin, they try to follow in the wake of their younger and derivative sisters, trifles like ‘Adults Only’ (Richard Lang) or ‘Wife Change’ (Jack Smight), both from 1980, which, compared to those mentioned above, are a show of fun , provocation and carnality … turning out, to tell the truth, the most discreet, rather mediocre, even seen with the eyes of the present gray moment.
After several shorts and works for television, Paco Caballero he had made his feature film debut with the happy comedy ‘Perdiendo el este’, a tailor-made product by Julián López, as nice and well orchestrated as it is impersonal, with an agile script enriched with a successful Bruguera aesthetic, so it was to be expected that his next feature he will have a greater ambition and a more marked personality. This is one of the objectives pursued by the script that the director signs in the company of Daniel González, Enric Navarro and Eduard Solà.
One of its main attractions is its choral cast, in which, in the midst of the supposed carnal debauchery, we can distinguish the faces of Ernesto Alterio, Ana Milan, Pilar Castro, Anna Castillo, Raul Arévalo, Verónica Echegui, Álvaro Cervantes, Luis Callejo, Miki Esparbé, María Morales, Ricardo Gómez or Melina Matthews, among others.
Almost all splendid performers who are just fine, no bragging, definitely wasted. Nor is it that they had to try too hard. Which means that either Caballero is a good acting director –something I do not deny–, or that these actors and actresses have at this point enough tables to get out of trouble and save the furniture in any type of film, embolado or situation.
Powerfully attracts attention how worried the director is about not showing any skin in a film that is sold openly as a celebration of sex, and that when naked bodies, male and female, necessarily invade the frame, they are almost always blurred.
In theory, the years in which orgies were represented on screen with the harshness and explicitness of ‘Eyes wide shut’ or ‘Shortbus’ are not so far away, in theory. This is the great and insurmountable paradox of a work that you want at the same time good feeling and wild, hypothetically directed to a target, I want to think that reduced, that it pursues an experience to the Gaspar Noé with heart of Richard Curtis.
‘Where Two Fit’: A Surprisingly Cocky Sex Comedy
But even, given the final product, invoking the feel-good Curtis vibe, a big one, seems more like sacrilege. The jumble of plots that make up ‘Where Two Fit’ is more like a Jurassic show by the unfortunate José Luis Moreno. The only story that has something of interest, despite being predictable, is the one that has as its object (forgiveness) the desire to the always extraordinary Anna Castillo.
The others oscillate between the anodyne, the obvious and the tacky, highlighting the glory hole, in which two gay men argue about the need for the commitment that the face-to-face with a wall in between (wasn’t there a less obvious metaphor?) or the one starring Maria Leon Y Aixa Villagrán, which desperately seeks a grace that never comes, with actresses who have repeatedly shown that they are above the situations and dialogues that encasque them here.
Not to mention the null need to include an episode outside the Paradiso club environment, the center of all the actions … did you shoot it later and add it with a shoehorn? As if that were not enough, the film concludes with a good monologue to the rhythm of the bars of ‘The Blue House’ that seems to be a serious equivalent to the one that Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert wrote for the end of ‘Beyond the valley of the dolls’ (1970), this one, a sex comedy comme il faut.
Despite not being in any case my comedy ideals, almost that I am left with the frontal impudence and honesty of ‘Villaviciosa next door’ or ‘Don’t call it love, call it Xs’, not to mention’ Kiki, love it is done ‘, which exemplifies everything that this film pretends to be and is not enough because it lacks guts and has too much fear, political correctness and saturation of conciliatory messages.
In short, I’m afraid in 2021 the (sexual) revolution will be televised… and hopefully you will be able to see it with your parents and grandparents. One should come out hot from the ‘Where two fit’ projection, and rather come out with indigestion of sugar and other sweeteners. This data is enough to consider that the film does not reach its objective. But the saddest thing is that it seems that, for you know what traumas or imperatives, you don’t even mean it.