Review: A Map For Love

24th February 2014

A Map for Love is the tale of Roberta, a young mother of a 6 year old boy that’s just entered into a relationship with the impulsive Javiera. Roberta decides that if her new relationship with Javiera is going to work, she will need to come out to her mother. She arranges for a boat trip around the bay for the three of them so they can get to know each other. Stormy waters are ahead though as generational, sexual and social barriers need to be traversed in order for their love to be accepted.

This movie is a well executed tale technically, unfortunately it’s not without it’s issues. The movie has many pacing issues and I found my concentration waning as we go through many scenes where people seem trapped in their own heads unable to say what they feel. These moments should have been emotionally charged but the characters all seem a little two dimensional. Everybody seems like a stereotype and has no complexity to them at all. The dialogue is also a little too on the nose for my tastes.

I can’t quite get my head around the message this movie is trying to tell; It seems like it’s trying to ram down our throats the fact that lesbian relationships are still looked upon with prejudice and should be more widely accepted. I get that I’m not the target audience here, I’m a 28 year old straight man but I do however live in Brighton, the gay capital of the UK where love in all forms is widely accepted. So the main issue I have with the movie is the fact that it isn’t a tale of true love, it seems more like the tale of first love, too lustful and naive. It feels like the movie is a teenager who’s screaming to the world “you don’t understand our love, what we have is special”; Moments later it seems as though it’s trying too hard to say “look! We’re normal just like you”. Not even Roberta seems to have made up her mind about what she wants, as we’re shown a dream sequence where Roberta is carrying an un made bed through the streets; If even she hasn’t made her bed to lie in, how the hell are we meant to accept it.

All in all this movie doesn’t feel like a tale of love rather than a tale of experimentation. Like I say though, I’m not the target market and maybe you’ll get something else out of this.

3/10

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