Sergi López Movies
A burly Spaniard whose soft, open features are equally suited to expressing nice-guy innocence and sociopathic malice, Sergi Lopez came to the attention of an international audience with his title role in Dominik Moll's Harry, un Ami Qui Vous Veut du Bien (With a Friend Like Harry), for which he won Best Actor prizes from the European Film Awards and the French Academy of Cinema.Hailing from the Catalonian town of Vilanova, where he was born Sergi Lopez Y Ayats on December 22, 1965, Lopez got his start in film in the early '90s. He made his screen debut as the protagonist of Manuel Poirier's La Petite Amie d'Antonio in 1992; the actor's collaboration with French director Poirier would be the first of many. After appearing in a number of subsequent films, including Poirier's La Campagne (1995), Lopez won wide acclaim for his role as a Spanish shoe salesman adrift in a series of picaresque adventures through Brittany, in Poirier's Western (1997). Screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was a critical success, earning Lopez probably his greatest exposure to date.
Lopez also continued to act in Spanish productions, including the 1999 film Lisboa, in which he played a salesman who has a lusty affair with a hitchhiker (Carmen Maura) he picks up, and Manuel Gomez Pereira's Entre las piernas (1998), an erotic drama starring Spanish screen goddess Victoria Abril. In addition, even as he became more prominent on the big screen, he continued his involvement in a number of Spanish stage productions.
In 1999, Lopez did some of the most internationally prominent work of his career, when he starred alongside French actress Nathalie Baye in Une Liaison Pornographique. An erotic drama directed by Frederic Fonteyne, it featured Lopez in the role of a Parisian man who embarks on an affair with a stranger (Baye) with whom he explores the parameters of intimacy and anonymity. The film earned critical raves on both sides of the Atlantic, with particular praise going to Lopez and Baye. The success of this film was nicely complemented by that of Harry, un Ami Qui Vous Veut du Bien the following year, with Lopez's portrayal of a creepy guy with a penchant for boiled eggs and murder garnering the actor widespread respect. His rising profile was reflected in the number of projects with which he was subsequently involved, including two more collaborations with Poirier, Te Quiero and Les Femmes....Ou Les Enfants d'Abord, and El Cielo Abierto, which cast him as an analyst whose wife leaves him for another man. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
In this drama, two people discover that it's not as simple as they thought to have a purely sexual relationship. A man and woman in their early 40s (Nathalie Baye and Sergi Lopez), are introduced to each other through a personal ad and agree to meet once a week for a sexual liaison. The meetings are meant to be exciting but impersonal; they agree that they won't exchange names or ask questions about their lives outside this relationship. They also don't engage in convention, though we're never told (or shown) just what the couple is sharing instead. However, as the weeks go by, a bond grows between them, and after several weeks he proposes that they have dinner together before retiring to their hotel room; a few months down the road, she suggests that they should try making love in the traditional manner for the first time. These events bring them closer together, but they also change the tenor of their relationship; this change is symbolized most clearly when a man collapses in the hallway outside their motel room and together they take him to a hospital. Une Liaison Pornographique was screened at the 1999 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nathalie Baye, Sergi López, (more)
A salesman offers a ride to a sexy woman and soon finds himself deep in trouble in the thriller Lisboa. Joao (Segi Lopez) is a traveling salesman from Portugal who is somewhere outside of Madrid when he stops to offer a lift to Berta (Carmen Maura), an attractive hitch-hiker. Sparks soon fly between them, and moments later they're having sex in a public restroom. Joao starts to wonder what he's gotten himself into when he discovers Berta is carrying a gun, but despite this he agrees to drive her to Lisbon. She claims to be going there to clear up some financial misdoings committed by her husband; however, Joao soon finds Berta's son, daughter and father are all following their trail, and the situation becomes all the more complicated when Berta's husband (Federico Luppi) shows up. This (along with Las Huellas Borradas) was one of two films featuring Federico Luppi to be shown at the 1999 Malaga Film Festival in Spain. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carmen Maura, Federico Luppi, (more)
- 1999
In this low-key drama from France, Marie (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) has been laid off for over a year; depressed and with little to do, she drifts through the aisles of a supermarket, aimlessly doing her shopping. She bumps into Pierre (Patrick Dell'Isola); they strike up a conversation and she discovers that he worked for the same firm and was also let go, about a month ago. They keep running into each other at the market and strike up a friendship that grows into an affair. But Marie and Pierre are both married, and neither wants their spouses to know; this relationship has less to do with love than with a need to fill up the empty hours of the day and restore their damaged self-esteems. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Patrick Dell'Isola, (more)
- 1999
Raul Veiga directs this Spanish psychological thriller about a double suicide. After a couple is found shot to death, old flames of the deceased Modia (Rosana Pastor) and Luis (Sergi Lopez) comb through their personal belongings and soon enter into their own romance. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosana Pastor, Sergi López, (more)
La Nouvelle Eve is a bittersweet comedy about an independent woman, thirty-ish and single, and her unexpected need for the affections of a forty-ish balding family man with no interest in acquiring a mistress. Camille (Karin Viard) works as a lifeguard at an indoor swimming pool in Paris. The idea of domesticity bores her to tears; she would rather see herself having kinky sex in elevators or restrooms than carrying a baby in her arms. But something has been missing in her life, and she's absent-minded and irritable. When she trips on the street and falls, Alexis (Pierre-Loup Rajot) offers her his handkerchief. Camille is self-destructive in her obsession to possess Alexis. But Alexis is not totally indifferent, either. Acting is quite remarkable, particularly the performance of Karin Viard as a modern woman who is completely confused with her old-fashioned emotions. The film pokes fun at the bourgeois family life as well as the singles scene. La Nouvelle Eve, which was produced by Paolo Bronco, was screened as part of the Panorama section of the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Karin Viard, Pierre-Loup Rajot, (more)
Scripter Sergi Belbel and director Ventura Pons based this film on Belbel's 1991 play, structured in a fashion similar to Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde (1900) and Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991): Two character set-ups feature one character from each scene turning up in the next scene, and so on, as a variety of people parade through diverse romantic and sexual situations. Cars careen about via an altered camera speed to provide the linkages between the 11 interlocking scenes. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Selvas, Laura Conejero, (more)
- 1998
Often referred to as a cousin to Pedro Almodovar or Bigas Luna, Manuel Gomez Pereira has been covering up his sharp social satire behind nice exteriors in his previous five films. No more nice guy, says Pereira, in an erotic tale of sex-o-mania. And with who else but ravishing Victoria Abril in the role of radio show assistant Miranda who just can't get enough! Miranda meets budding screenwriter Javier (Javier Bardem) during a group therapy session for sex addicts. Javier cannot live without regular telephone sex, while Miranda goes out every night in search of quick sexual encounters. They make love in the back of an abandoned car which has a corpse hidden inside its trunk. Miranda's jealous husband is the cop investigating the case.and it soon looks like Javier has been framed. There is quite a bit of Hitchcock here, which is acknowledged by Pereira. But on the whole, the film does not have a strong structure to carry the weight; the sex addiction theme of the first part goes out of focus when several subplots (unidentified corpse, etc.) distract the audience, resulting in a soft porno picture with little plausibility. The redeeming factor is the convincing acting by the sensual Victoria Abril. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victoria Abril, Javier Bardem, (more)
A French road movie with an unlikely and mystifying title, Western is actually a romantic comedy-drama from writer-director Manuel Poirier. A charming Spanish shoe salesman, Paco (Sergi Lopez), picks up a Russian hitchhiker, Nino (Sacha Bourdo). Nino steals Paco's flashy car because Nino thinks that it will help him find a woman. Paco is befriended by Marinette (Elisabeth Vitali), and they fall in love, but he loses his job. Paco attacks Nino, but the two later become friends. Marinette tells Paco that she wants to have a trial separation before making a commitment, so Paco and Nino take a trip across the French countryside. At a hotel, two women reject the awkward Nino and sleep with Paco. Paco tries to help Nino by canvassing the town's women in a fake poll on their ideal man, but this scheme also backfires. As they continue their romantic misadventures, luck begins to shift from Nino to Paco. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sergi López, Sacha Bourdo, (more)
- 1995
This French slice-of-life drama follows the laid-back exploits of a small group of people who leave Paris to experience the quiet country life. Lila, a recent ex-con in her twenties, decides to exchange Parisian life for live in the small village where her sister is living. There she meets Benoit, another Paris refugee in his late thirties. Though, not well suited, they fall in love. Both of them carry torches for former loves. Suddenly, Lila leaves; Benoit grieves. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benoit Regent, Judith Henry, (more)
- 1992
The young Catalan Antonio lives in France earning his keep by doing construction work. He gradually falls in love with Claudie, an off-kilter girl with a mixed-race family. As he grows attached to her, he becomes even more willing than he was before to love her as she is, warts and all. However, he wants to understand what could have led her to spending some time inside a mental hospital. She tends to be depressed and uncommunicative, but Antonio's warm acceptance helps her to open up gradually. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sergi López, Florence Giorgetti, (more)
