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With a photograph for identification, wealthy land and coffee plantation owner Luis Durand
(Antonio Banderas) waits at the Havana seaport to meet Julia Russell (Angelina Jolie), a pen-pal who had responded to his "mail-order-bride" advertisement for someone "kind,
true and young enough to bear children". Neither love nor beauty matters for Luis. The Julia who comes to him does not look like the picture. This one is so stunning that he
is overwhelmed, and falls head-over-heels for her. Marriage immediately follows and the relationship seems so blissful that Luis opens his heart and everything he has to her,
including complete access to his bank accounts. Too soon, he discovers that Julia is an impostor—she is actually Bonny, who has now left him, leaving but sixty dollars in
his bank accounts. He begins a relentless search for the impostor with the intent to kill her, and thus begin the surprises in the story.
The audience has to wade through the many twists and turns of this complicated tale to find
out what Luis wants and who or what drives "Julia" to have such a compelling influence over her husband. There are several instances when you think here is the ending scene,
only to be surprised by a new sequence coming on. Then you are, and should be, most surprised by the real ending. Banderas and Jolie characterize their roles with passion.
Luis is touching as one who completely loses himself to Julia. Julia on the other hand shows the complex personality of a woman who struggles between what she is and her
desire to be her own self.
It is difficult to summarize, much less analyze,Original Sin
without somehow getting to the point of revealing the surprises in the plot. It is a story about good, evil and love, but it is not a love story of what is right or wrong. It differentiates between love and lust, and succeeds in proving that lust could lead to love and then breed another form of lust. This is a provocative film and should lead the viewer to many profound questions relating to good and evil, because while the skillful cinematography combined with the powerful acting offer an engaging feast for eye and mind, the story itself takes us deeper into the human psyche. How have Bonny and Billy come to be the agents of evil that they are? Are their years of deprivation in the orphanage the cause of this? What kind of man is Luis who loves a woman despite having fallen victim to her predatory ways? If love conquers all, why do lovers get enslaved to forces meant to kill love? Which is more enduring—good or evil?
Original Sin's
lessons on love, lust, trust, physical abuse, psychological dominations, show how persons could be adversely or positively changed by these, but bear in mind that these lessons would only be understood by the mature.
(Date reviewed: September 21, 2001)
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