My Friend Eva, a Spanish film that opened across Israeli theaters on Thursday, is billed as a romantic comedy, but it would be more accurate to call it an unromantic one, which makes it more interesting, although maybe a bit less enjoyable. It is often quite funny.
It stars Nora Navas in the title role as Eva, playing a character confronting a dilemma that is usually reserved for men on screen: She is bored and discontented with her life, specifically her husband.
Eva’s desire for a passionate relationship hits her by surprise when she leaves Barcelona and goes on a business trip to Rome – she is an executive at a publishing house – where she is smitten with the man who has the hotel room next to hers, Alex (Rodrigo de la Serna), a handsome Argentinian screenwriter who lives in Spain.
They have a “meet-cute” when the adjoining door between their rooms is left ajar, and she walks on him naked, then backs out in embarrassment.
Later, when he runs into her in the lobby, he is not upset. Instead, they flirt, and he suggests she have dinner at a restaurant he recommends.
It pulls its punches towards the end
When they run into each other again, he convinces her to go to a birthday party for some friends, and everyone assumes they are a couple.
He knows she is married, and while it’s clear he doesn’t care, she gets so tipsy that nothing happens afterward, and they each go their separate ways.
But their little flirtation makes enough of an impression on him that he leaves her a book with his phone number and an invitation to call him anytime.
She keeps looking at the book and thinking about him as she returns to her usual routine, which includes being with Victor (Juan Diego Botto), her husband, who works in hi-tech and has a passion for interior design.
The couple has two charming children and a lovely apartment, and they often entertain other couples who have similar lifestyles.
One night at a dinner party with their married friends, Eva then makes a throwaway comment about how she envies a friend who has just gotten divorced after she saw him on the street kissing his new girlfriend.
Victor takes it as a condemnation of their relationship. Everyone assures him that she didn’t mean anything by it and tells him not to take it personally.
But although Eva doesn’t own up to it at first, it was a very personal remark, and the soft-spoken Victor was right to get upset and feel threatened.
It’s usually the men in movies who have this kind of sudden-onset midlife crisis, but here it’s Eva who impulsively decides to move out of her apartment and start dating.
She’s been texting with Alex, and her hopes are high. But when it looks as if he is unavailable, she throws herself into the dating pool and discovers a not particularly appealing truth: It’s hard to feel passion for the men she meets there.
One is very cheap, another is kind of boring, some of them aren’t good in bed, etc. For many attractive men her age, Eva, who is about to turn 50, is too old for them.
This echoes what Nora Ephron wrote in her novel, Heartburn, about women leaving their marriages in the 1970s.
“Their wives went out into the world, free at last, single again, and discovered the horrible truth: That they were sellers in a buyer’s market, and that the major concrete achievement of the women’s movement in the 1970s was the Dutch treat,” she wrote.
Maybe Ephron went a little too far with the “Dutch treat” crack, but you get the idea, and very quickly, so does Eva.
We in the audience may root for Eva to find the new love of her life, but as the film goes on, it becomes clear that director Cesc Gay, who co-wrote the film with Eduard Sola, doesn’t really want her to.
What the film plays with is the idea of Eva finding great love, and it makes fun of it, though it pulls its punches a little toward the end, hinting at a happily-ever-after for the heroine.
The irony here is that all the characters are from the same milieu. They are effortlessly attractive, wearing the same kind of tasteful casual clothes, and eating and drinking the same appetizing-looking food and wine.
Victor tends to go on about what kind of rug he wants for the living room, but that’s the worst thing you can say about him, and many women would find that to be a positive aspect in a husband.
No one has any big problems, and no one is distinctive in any way. While it’s only natural to long for one’s youth and have romantic fantasies, it’s hard to imagine anyone in this world of fine wine and lovely sweaters feeling very passionate about anything.
I would have liked the film better if the director had found even more comedy in Eva’s disillusionment.
