La Habitación azul

Infobox Film
name = La Habitación azul


caption = Patricia Llaca at the controversial movie poster.
director = Walter Doehner
writer = Walter Doehner (Screenplay)
Vicente Leñero (Screenplay)
Georges Simenon (Novel)
starring = Patricia Llaca (Andrea)
Juan Manuel Bernal (Antonio a.k.a. "Toño")
Elena Anaya (Ana)
José María Yazpik (Roberto)
Mario Iván Martínez (Nicolás)
Margarita Sanz (Dora)
Damián Alcazar (Garduño)
producer = Epigmenio Ibarra
Carlos Payán
Inna Payán
Christian Valdelièvre (Coproducer)
distributor =
released = 2002
runtime = 95 minutes
language = Spanish
budget =
imdb_id = 0299956

"La Habitación azul" (English: "The Blue Room") is a Mexican-Spanish film produced by Argos Cine and directed by Walter Doehner.

Plot

Toño (Juan Manuel Bernal) and his wife, Ana (Elena Anaya), decide to come back to their home town, after living for a long time in Mexico City. But things get complicated when Toño finds Andrea (Patricia Llaca), a woman for whom he had lusted since adolescence, in the town.

Thus, the unfulfilled and repressed desires of both Toño and Andrea are passionately released with their sexual encounter.

Hiding from Toño's wife and Andrea's husband (played by Mario Iván Martínez), they are helped by Toño's brother (José María Yazpik), who runs a hotel in the town, and whose blue room is lent to the lovers (hence the name of the film, "The Blue Room").

Controversy

The film was quite controversial due to its erotic advertising, most advertising materials used an of Patricia Llaca fully nude lying on a bed and looking at the camera. Billboards and ads on public transport and in magazines, etc., showed the same or a similar picture, raising controversy thanks to Llaca's nudity. In some media, her buttocks were then digitally covered with a blanket to calm the sensitivities of offended Mexicans. (In comparison to some other countries, Mexican society remains quite conservative.)

The film itself was indeed highly erotic, showing full nude scenes of both Patricia Llaca and Juan Manuel Bernal. In this sense, the advertising was true to the film. Llaca, however, declared that the film producers deliberately "used" her nude body to advertise the film.

Awards

In 2002, the film received the Silver Precolumbian Circle at the Bogota Film Festival in the category of best film and was nominated in the same year to receive the Golden Spike at the Valladolid International Film Festival.