E-Mail This Article to a Friend DEPENDENCIA SEXUAL/SEXUAL DEPENDENCY

Bolivian-American director Rodrigo Bellott scrutinizes the sexual initiation of five young people in this split-screen, continent-spanning, bi-lingual disaster. The sexual experiences of the characters — a slum-living beauty with a tyrannical dad; a virginal Colombian visiting his cousin in Bolivia; a boastful, controlling boyfriend to a model; an African-American rape-victim monologuist; and a closeted football stud (all played by non-professional actors) — are sometimes brutal, sometimes banal, all loveless, all non-erotic. The sex doesn’t have to be explosive or even titillating, but the stories and situations do have to keep you engaged, and that’s where Bellott fails. Badly. What’s more, the split-screen technique, employed through all but about 10 minutes of the film, distracts and annoys. Without the stories to support them, the big themes — violence, violation, machismo, innocence, ego, and the universal struggle of settling into your sexual identity — drop like deflated balloons. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. (104 minutes)