Arsenevich: Hal Hartley - Amateur (1994)

Isabelle es una ex-monja que ahora escribe relatos eróticos en revistas pornográficas. Por esas cosas de la vida, se encuentra con un hombre amnésico a quien va a intentar ayudar a recordar quién era antes de perder su memoria, su identidad y todo lo que tenía -antes de olvidar que lo tenía-. Lo cierto es que posteriormente las cosas se complican para nuestros protagonistas, repentinamente envueltos en una gran trama de conspiración y misterios de la cual realmente no pueden huir.

El film es una imagen deliciosamente elegante y sesgada del sexo, la violencia y el amor en los Estados Unidos de la década del 90, y lleva sus preocupaciones más serias (la culpa, la responsabilidad, la explotación, la redención) con admirable ligereza. Huppert está especialmente bien, conjurando una hábil mezcla de melancolía divertida y erotismo inesperado que, por cierto, proporciona al cineasta un retrato conmovedor de una relación amorosa malograda. Como siempre, los actores habituales de Hartley prestan un servicio excelente, mientras que el buen trabajo de cámara y la música agradable contribuyen a los placeres más sensuales de la película.

-- Timeout

Isabelle is an ex-nun waiting for her special mission from God. In the meantime, she is making a living writing pornography. She meets Thomas, a sweet, confused amnesiac who cannot remember that he used to be a vicious pornographer, responsible for turning his young wife, Sofia, into the world's most notorious porn queen. Sofia's on the run, convinced she's killed him. Together, Isabelle and Thomas set out to discover his past, a past waiting to catch up with him.

[...] But what is Hartley up to? Having seen four of his films, I think he wants to free himself of the lockstep tyranny of traditional plots, where characters are assigned names and personalities, choose up sides and struggle for two hours. The audience knows whom it likes and whom it hates and can guess what will happen, and is essentially bored, although it may not realize it. In a Hartley film you are not bored, although you may grow disinterested when you see that his manipulations are as arbitrary, in their way, as old-fashioned plots.

-- Roger Ebert

[...] Many romantic triangles are bizarre, but in Amateur Hal Hartley has concocted the most irresistibly strange one to hit the screen in a long time. A pretty former nun is trying to earn a living by writing for pornographic magazines. She falls for a sensitive man who has amnesia and traces of a sordid past. He is still married to a prostitute, who is trying to kill him and leave her old life behind. Add to this an arms dealer who sends his thugs after the prostitute, and life couldn't be more complicated or more deliciously droll. The nun, the amnesiac and the prostitute fit neatly into Mr. Hartley's distinctive world, a place that is always serious and comically absurd. "Amateur" is his most ambitious view of that world yet.

-- Caryn James, NYT