Film Feature

Maldeamores The Island of enchantment is known for its beautiful beaches, tasty and spicy cuisine, beautiful women, rum and myriad other things. However, it is not known for its cinematic prowess. Executive producer Benicio Del Toro is aiming to change that. On the heels of the Latin American NeoCinema Movement comes a little film about love of all kinds and at all ages set in the backyards of Puerto Rico, written and directed by emerging talented Boricuas.

"All love letters are ridiculous; if they weren’t ridiculous then they wouldn’t be love letters” – Fernando Pessoa This quote was our premise for “Maldeamores”. It doesn’t matter who you are, your social class, your education, your spiritual background; when we deal with love or lovesickness, everybody becomes a bit hysterical, irrational, and absurd. “Maldeamores” is a trip through some of the more disenchanting aspects of love, with deteriorated characters and absurd situations, framed in an environment of dark humor and cynicism.

It’s a slice of our Latin idiosyncrasies, which also shows how intense and intensely flawed love can be.This feature is made of various stories that illustrate, in chronological order, the stages a person goes through in the constant evolution of their ability to love. These are the discovery and disillusion of youth, the search for the object of desire in adulthood, and the confusion between fear of loneliness and compassion in old age.

Puerto Rico is a small island in the Caribbean that, because of its small size constantly emanates a feeling of confinement and claustrophobia.

This gives us the perfect setting to explore, throughout the film, the traumas and foibles of our collective madness. This is the environment in which “Maldeamores” takes place, each story a small island. Said the director.

FMFB: And now we bring you the executive producer of Maldeamores.

Benicio Del Toro:
My duty was more as producer as helper of the project, more of a stimulator so they can dare to launch themselves and make their movie. I read the script and I saw they had this vision and insight into cinema, I saw that in Carlos and Miriam. I saw that it would be very easy to make this film, a film with many dimensions, an original comedy and most of all at the same time a Puerto Rican film.

Sometimes things that are clearly in front of you, sometimes they need another perspective to make them more clear and I guess it was my perspective that made it more clear.

The project itself was going to move because of the authors and all the others involved and there were many that were involved who I later had the pleasure of working with in the Che film (The Argentine).

There is so much talent in PR and it is a good thing to have projects come from there. I think this is a film that many can identify with, a film that touches many generations.

Entire families can go see this film: uncles, grand children, grand parents. I feel they can all identify and laugh at the same time, the job of the actors and all involved was fantastic.

I feel I did not do much cause I knew this film had this great potential to be very commercial and popular. It has all the qualities to appeal to older people, people that know of cinema, people that don't know cinema, it has a lot of potential to be a commercial or popular film.

I view films in the same manner a mechanic looks at the engine of
a car. I laughed out loud many times throughout the film. Well, in the
words of Hector Lavoe "My people prepare yourself to laugh, I hope you enjoy the
movie and that you laugh cause I sure did".