Live is Life, on Netflix: the title makes no sense, and the plot synopsis is disturbing: "On the cusp of adulthood, five friends search for a magical flower that can cure everything." What needs curing? One of the friends is hairless, so apparently he's dying of cancer. I hate movies about people dying of incurable diseases, especially when they trick you into watching with vague phrases like "their distressed friend's issue."
But none of the plot synopses mention girls. None of the first three reviews I read mention girls (or what the friend's issue is). Could there be some gay subtexts centered around lack of heterosexual interest? And it's set in Galicia, one of my favorite regions in Spain. Maybe I'll just start watching...
No, I won't be satisfied until I'm sure no one is dying. Several more reviews and Wikipedia tell me nothing, except that the title "Live is Life" comes from an 1984 song of the same name by the Austrian pop group Opus. It peaked at #1 in Austria and Canada, but I never heard of it -- or Opus. The lyrics sound they were translated from German:
Live is life, when we all feel the power/ Live is life, come on stand up and dance / Live is life, when the feeling of the people / Live is life, is the feeling of the band, yeah
Apparently it means "to live is to live," or less clunkily "to live is to live."
I read several more reviews, but none come out with what the "friend's issue" is. Finally I bit the bullet and did a google search on "Live is Life" "movie" "cancer." A detailed plot synopsis popped up!
Yep, the hairless one, Alvaro, has cancer. They also want the magical plant to cure one of their fathers, who is in a coma after falling off a roof. Plus, on the journey, they find a woman who has died of a drug overdose, and adopt her orphaned baby. And one of the boys meets The Girl of His Dreams.
I can understand hiding the cancer -- no one who knows about it will watch the movie. But why hide the hetero-romantic plotline? Don't most movies have those?
Wait -- it's advertised as a comedy/drama!
Listen up: any movie where someone has an incurable disease cannot, by definition, be a comedy!
Whew! Dodged a bullet there!
By the way, the main actors are too young to have beefcake photos, or photos of any sort, so I populated this article with random pictures of Spanish men.
I spent a lot of summers in Spain when I was a teen so this looks familiar to me- the trailer makes it look like "Stand by Me" except yes one of the boys looks ill- the chubby boy with the glasses wants to kiss a girl- I might watch it.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite of those phrases is "Viva la Vida". It's a Coldplay song about constant civil war.
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