Review of Shades of Decadencia (2015 Film):

Anabel is a working-class woman, eking out a living in a low-paid job. Then she starts a relationship with Oskar, a handsome, extremely wealthy entrepreneur. Their relationship flourishes and for Anabel this is a dream come true – she loves Oskar and he is her ticket out of her dead-end life. However, Oskar has a rather perverse side to him and starts to demand more and more of Anabel. She is uncomfortable with the direction the relationship is headed but is she willing to give up the benefits of it?

Provocative and intriguing and had potential to be quite profound. The quandary Anabel finds herself in – give up all the luxury and wealth involved the relationship or stick with Oskar and endure his fetishes. Even after the climactic scene of the movie and its result, there was room for a deep, powerful ending. However, rather than explore the situation, director Joaquin Rodriguez takes a rather quick, easy and trite path to the conclusion. There’s no profundity or comeuppance, just an end. Even the ending he chose is badly done – sudden, like there was a time limit on the film.

At first, this seems as a Spanish version of “Fifty Shades of Grey“. The story is similar (young and beautiful woman falls for rich, intense business person). For half the movie, you would think you are watching just an adaptation. However, at some point, it becomes dark. It is like a train wreck that you know that it will end bad yet you can’t move your eyes from it. It is hard to love this movie. It is easy to hate it. But it is hard to say that it is not realistic. These things do happen. These situations do exist. And this movie was a stylized representation of what happens when a innocent person falls for a psychopath.