In a tiny traditional peruvian seaside village miguel a young fisherman and his beautiful bride mariela are about to welcome their first child. But miguel has a secret: hes in love with santiago a painter who is ostracized by the town because hes gay. Studio: Wolfe Video Release Date: 05/31/2011 Run time: 100 minutes Rating: Nr

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70406 in DVD
• Brand: Wolfe
• Released on: 2011-06-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Spanish
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 100 minutes

Review
Perus submission to the Academy Awards! --Wolfe

Review
36 Awards including 19 Audience Awards! --Wolfe

Most helpful customer reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Magical realism, love and the hereafter
By wolfgang731
This beautiful ghost/love story is an eloquent and haunting exploration of the road not taken, of the aching that comes from realizing, too late, that you allowed your greatest happiness, you're most profound love, to fade from your life with no chance of ever retrieving it. In a small coastal village in Peru lives Miguel, a fisherman, and his pregnant and devoted wife, Mariela. Theirs is a life of simple pleasures and surroundings, but they have love, family and a sense of community. Santiago, a worldly artist has been living off and on in the village for many years but to the town's residents he's an outsider, an untrustworthy interloper living on the fringe of their tight-knit existence. However, for Miguel, Tiago (as he refers to him) is anything but; in many ways, he is his other self. These two men have for many years, shared a profound and intense love that due to fear has sadly lingered in shadows for too long. Where Santiago wants to share a more open relationship with Miguel, the latter refuses, even going so far as to reject his own nature and dismissing their shared feelings as nothing more than a special friendship albeit one that he is unwilling to even acknowledge to the outside world; however, when Santiago threatens to leave again, perhaps for good this time, Miguel is crestfallen and equally angry. SPOILERS - One afternoon, Miguel arrives home to find Santiago sitting at his dinner table and becomes enraged and when Santiago sees his reaction he realizes that Miguel can see him. You see, Santiago is now a ghost. He died in an accident and his soul is trapped in that village but is, luckily, visible to Miguel and only Miguel, who, in turn, promises that he will do everything possible to free his soul from its Earth bound existence. But nothing could be further from the truth as now Miguel can openly love Santiago without fear of being ostracized yet all the while maintaining his comfortable domestic life. Now he may walk along the beach holding hands with his true love and now he may sit on the couch between his wife and Santiago and watch television and relax in selfish contentment. For once Miguel is seemingly at peace with himself and he's unwilling to ever part with that. After a couple of village kids stumble into Santiago's old beach shack and find paintings and drawings of a nude Miguel, the truth of his relationship with Santiago comes to light and it's rough going for everyone from that moment on. The magical realism quality of this film worked so exquisitely, it made my heart ache with both joy and pain. To see these two men who were so much in love but afraid be able to openly express it to one another is as moving as anything I have ever seen in a film. There are no tidy endings here so don't look for them. There are many casualties and those that survived bear scars. The performances were uniformly excellent, even the smallest role is acted perfectly but Cristian Mercado as Miguel is absolutely amazing. The score by Selma Mutal Vermeulen merits special mention as it adds immeasurably to the feel of the film. Both the screenplay and direction are uncontrived, honest and direct, thankfully lacking in pretense. The art direction and cinematography by Diana Trujillo and Mauricio Vidal, respectively, is almost lyrical. They turn a hardscrabble and poor fishing village into a magical place where both sea and arid landscapes merge to create windswept vistas of unusual and powerful beauty. Undertow is a poetic and poignant testament to the power of love, loss and redemption. It is filmmaking of the highest caliber.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
I was not prepared for this!
By Andrew Hatcher
I actually missed my first opportunity to see this film at a film festival because the
summary did not immediately grab me. Then it got several film awards including Sundance
Audience Favorite in its category, and a friend urged me to see it. I was just not prepared
for the perfect story, the absolutely convincing moving acting, the stunning physical
setting in Cabo Blanco and the cinematography, the music. I saw it more than once and each time found more and
more in it. This writer/director (Javier Fuentes-Leon) has incredible talent and instincts,
and he worked on the script for close to a decade until it was really everything it needed
to be. Again and again I was asking myself, how did he manage to pull off THAT effect with
such simple means? This film goes right to the heart of what it is to be human, to be in a
relationship, to be in a community. And, how can we reconcile the irreconcilable parts of
our lives such that we can look unflinching into the mirror? The subtitling is very natural
which is not surprising since the Peruvian director works in LA and is fluent in English. I
only regret so few people are going to be able to see these sweeping beaches, caves and
cliffs in the theater, but I'm glad it is going to be released so soon (June 2011) on DVD
and Blu-ray. Stunning as is its effect the first time, when you don't when what is going to
happen or when, it loses nothing on the repetition because nothing was contrived. I just
started appreciating the minor characters, the unobtrusive but effective symbols, the perfectly laid-out music, all the more. In other words, a perfect film for DVD/Blu-ray !

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Achingly beautiful
By GEORGE RANNIE
This wonderful and achingly beautiful film that is gorgeously filmed in a small, by the sea, village in Peru is part ghost story and part a love story. The part that is a love story between Santiago and Miguel forms the part that touched me to my soul because it tells a beautiful tale of the unfulfilled love between two men (Miguel and Santiago). The roles of Santiago and Miguel are brilliantly played by Cristian Mercado and Manolo Cardona. In watching them in this film, one really believes in their love for each other. In fact, all of the acting in "Undertow" is superb as is the script, direction and photography. I really enjoyed this marvelous "little" film. It's truly my kind of movie that makes one think, and most of all feel emotionally. I loved it.

(Do view the interviews with the director and actors--they are wonderful)