The Loneliest Planet

Director: Julia Loktev
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg, Bidzina Gujabidze
Genre: Thriller 2011
Running time: 113 mins.
Rating:★½

Alex (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg) are young, in love and engaged to be married. The summer before their wedding, while backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, they hire a local guide (real-life mountaineer, Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them on a camping trek. Venturing into the stunning wilderness, a brief, shattering incident interrupts the trio's peaceful adventure. A subtle rift opens between Alex and Nica, quickly widening until it threatens to undo everything the couple believed about each other and themselves. Along with their ever-present guide, the young travelers find themselves journeying not only into a landscape that's both overwhelmingly open and frighteningly closed, but also into the farthest depths of their own understandings.

Though in most of the films Gael Garcia Bernal has been in, have annoyed or angered me immensely and the cinematography sucks (as if it was all shot with a camera used purely for home movies and for the attraction of hipsters and artsy-fartsy bullshit), the chemistry between Barnal and Hani Furstenberg is electrifying and delightful. Nevertheless, the movie as a whole fails to hold my attention and the plot drags out to long. "Natural" and "realistic" time maybe, but boring as fuck. Like being the third wheel in their adventure, unable to speak or get their attention.