The Laws of Thermodynamics (2018)
Review of The Laws of Thermodynamics /Las leyes de la termodinámica (2018) by Mateo Gil
I had never seen a movie from Spain until now, nor has Spanish cinema actually come across my radar until now. I think this truly was the bad movie to watch as a beginning to Spanish cinema, because this was a really corny and poorly executed movie. I come in with a bias against romance, but the cinematography and the general atmosphere that this movie gave off really was…not great.
I was really interested in the lead actress though; she’s mixed Ukrainian and Ethiopian and was adopted as a young child by a Spanish family in Elche, Spain. That’s a fascinating background to have, and I thought she was so beautiful. Her character was also more interesting to me, which is probably why I looked her up to begin with.
Anyways, let’s start this review.
Content
Our main character is an obsessive scientist who can literally only seem to talk about physics. He falls in love with a famous model, but seems to only try to rationalize it via physics. We follow them through the ups and downs as they begin their relationship with each other. The first problem with this film, however, is that they lack any sort of chemistry. The guy is too awkward and she seems to have much more of a personality than he does.
There’s this strange mix of actual physicist explaining hardcore physics concepts and then the actual movie itself. For the club scene, for example, as our characters make out in the middle of a club, there’s just an overlay of a physicist explaining the Law of Attraction. Is it neat? Kind of?
But I didn’t really appreciate it, especially, since the male lead is also obsessed with physics and tends to have his own voiceovers explaining similar topics. It’s also extremely distracting to switch from a Spanish narrative into English-speaking physicists explaining about science I already know.
It’s almost as if this movie is trying too hard to apply physics and our own lives as human beings via a romantic sense, but it comes at us too hard. At times, it seems like the entirety of the dialogue in this film is just about physics. Hell, she even breaks up with him because he doesn’t know how to rationalize the world without turning it into a physics problem. We’re really getting into his head by being completely consumed with these topics, but it’s very disorienting as a viewer to keep cutting back and forth to professionals being interviewed to the actual story of the movie.
Overall Thoughts
There isn’t really much to this film, to be quite honest. The content section of this review covers the vast majority of what to expect and my thoughts, and so this film is a hard no for me. Unless you’re into having the entire movie’s nuances explained to you by physicists and having certain concepts and how they apply to the movie thrust upon your face, then this isn’t the movie for you. The characters fall flat, the narrative is only half of what it should be (the rest is physics!), and, despite being a romcom, it isn’t that funny.
