A walk and a wank, a perv, a paddle and a pick up, a shag and a shower.

Reading Jules Verne’s Journey to The Moon on a Barcelona beach.

It seems not much happens in END OF THE CENTURY and what does is in segments. It takes a while to settle into the subtle time shift subtext of this quietly entrancing film.

Two blokes, Ocho and Javi, eye each other off in Barcelona. There’s obvious interest and attraction but it takes a little work to actually get them together. Is it something to do with the KISS t shirt Javi wears?

Both men are on holiday in Barcelona, Ocho, a poet, on vacation from Manhattan, Javi, a producer of children’s television, taking a break from his partner and kid in Berlin.

Their attraction has the fizz of the new but as first throes of passion are sated there is a dawning sensation they have met before and the film takes off in an exploration of past experience.

The film’s title, END OF THE CENTURY comes from the year that these two met, 1999, when both were closeted, both had a mutual friend, Sonia, who Javi was bedding, and there was a prevailing uncertainty about the future.

The twin spectres of YK2 and HIV hovered and the end of the century may indeed be the end of the world.

Lucio Castro makes his feature film directorial debut with this slow burn existential essay that revels in reverie. If existentialism is the philosophy of of disorientation, then END OF THE CENTURY is an existential film. But unlike the literature that has developed with its influence, it is not a film of despair.

Rather it is a hypnotic tale of hope, reunion and reconnection, a romantic story of displacement and replacement.