This movie is about a Chilean teenager (Manuela Martell) who is orphaned in Italy after her ex-pat parents are killed in a traffic accident. She tries to care for her slightly younger brother, but is frustrated trying to find legitimate employment (she works in a hair salon, but is not allowed to cut anyone's hair). She gets sexually involved with some older friends of her brother who are both "personal trainers" and small-time thugs, and they enlist her as the sexual "bait" in a plot to rob a supposedly wealthy, blind American (Rutger Hauer) who is a former "muscleman" star of Italian peplums (60's sword and sandal films). But she begins to form sympathy for her intended target.This isn't a great film, but it is a GOOD film and the kind of film they need to make more of. I think it is an Italian-Chilean co-production, but it has a genuine international feel to it since it features Rutger Hauer, a cult legend in both American films ("Blade Runner", "The Hitcher") and Dutch films before that ("Turkish Delight", "Soldier of Orange"). It's appropriate that he's a peplum actor here because the peplums were some of the first films the once vaunted Italian film industry was able to export internationally on their way to eventually becoming a more low-rent but legitimate competitor to Hollywood in 60's and 70's (before the bottom completely fell out by the mid-80's). Rutger Hauer is good in this as a tragi-comic, lonely blind man (certainly a lot better than he is in Dario Argento's "Dracula", which may have been what brought him to Rome). But even if he weren't, he's become a truly iconic presence by this point.Manuela Martelli is one of the best young actresses in Chile. She was is "Machuca", perhaps the best Chilean film in recent memory, and a more obscure adult-oriented teen film called "B-Happy". There just aren't many films made though in a country of only 15 million, or many opportunities for film actresses, so it's good to see her in this. She really goes toe-to-toe with Rutger Hauer (sometimes literally since his character likes to strip her naked, rub oil all over her beautiful body, and "wrestle" in the bed with her). She might not be considered a "hot" actress if you stood her next to someone like Megan Fox or Alexandra Daddario, but not only wouldn't any of the "hot" Hollywood actresses like that ever take on a role like this, they'd never be able to pull off if they did. A lot of young Hollywood actresses today won't do extensive nudity or erotic roles because they seem to think it would make them porn actresses, but that might be because they don't have much more talent than porn actresses to begin with. It actually takes a lot of talent to play a truly erotic, sensual role like this, let alone all the other dramatic paces Martelli has to do in this film.Of course, the reason America doesn't have many actresses that can do roles like this is because they very rarely make movies like this. And that is a shame really. There isn't even much left of American "Indiewood" today to even justify the "indie" part. So it's nice to see a small but up-and-coming national film industry (Chile) combine with a once great one (Italy) to give a role to an iconic older actor and an opportunity to a sexy AND genuinely talented young actress. Maybe the movie itself is no great shakes, but it doesn't really need to be.

A surprisingly compelling movie. Two Chilean teenagers living in Rome (Bianca and Tomas) became orphans when their parents die in a car accident. Living now alone in an apartment, they soon drop school and find some jobs to sustain themselves: she in a hair salon, he in a gym. Soon, Tomas brings two dubious friends from the gym to live with them in their apartment. These friends, who seem to easily manipulate Tomas, eventually engage Bianca in a seemingly harebrained plot: she has to seduce a former bodybuilder and sword and sandals star named Maciste (played by the veteran Dutch actor Rutger Hauer), who is blind and lives as a recluse in an old mansion in Rome, so she can find the safe in his house where he presumably keeps his fortune. So the rest of the movie is about how the strange relationship between Bianca and Maciste develops. Only the ending is unsatisfying. Playing Bianca, the pretty, petite Manuela Martelli looks a bit sour and expressionless, but is compelling as she appears about half the running time in the nude along the much older Hauer. Based on a novel by the prestigious Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño.

I rented this movie because I loved Alicia Scherson's 2005 movie titled Play, which was delightful. This movie was not. It was relentlessly depressing until the very last few seconds, but by that time I had long since ceased to care what happened to any of the obnoxious characters.Lesbians and straight men might enjoy watching a teenage Italian girl walk around totally naked and covered in some kind of oil for 90 minutes, but only sleazy fat old men could enjoy watching her have paid sex repeatedly with a sleazy fat old man. The ONLY few seconds of this horrible movie that were tolerable AT ALL were some views of Rome not normally shown in movies.The respect I had for Scherson after seeing Play has been demolished. I've re-watched Play several times and loved it more each time, but I'd rather have my arm amputated than watch this movie again.

Would like to give to have given this film a 7.5 if it was available. Neither the positive review from our local arts newspaper, or the one fairly negative user review already on IMDb "Downbeat Erotica"capture my experience of 'The Future,' seen with a friend at the Vancouver International Film Festival yesterday. Perhaps I was disposed to find value in the film as I had to rearrange my normal Sunday to see it, and I had picked it on the strength of its synopsis, the few available reviews and the role that Rutger Hauer has in it (he is forever associated, for me, with the role of the replicant "Roy" in Blade Runner.) My companion liked it less than me, saying for her, there was something missing in this film. I wouldn't call it my most memorable film ever, but I was very engaged with the main character's journey and several features of this picture intrigued me: • the essential ugliness of the slice of Italy depicted (playing against tourism clichés) especially as it seems to be richly tied to the main character, Bianca's psychological state; as Bianca's mental state changes she remarks on her surroundings reshaping themselves • like the magic realism of the sun that never sets, there is a close relationship in the film between what we see in a supposedly realistic lens, and what is going on for Bianca and to some extent, for her younger brother. It's like a film demonstration of Freudian "projection" • I enjoyed that an inversion between stereotypes of light and dark occur in the thrown-out-of-kilter world of the two orphaned teenagers. Rather than a descent of darkness into their lives in the wake of their parents' sudden death, Bianca and Tomas are beset with insomnia inducing daylight. • the villains are venal, petty, and better housekeepers and cooks than the heroine and her sidekick brother; while they bring a moral mess into the lives of the teens, rather like the serpent offering the apple to Eve, they have quirky traits such as excelling at crosswords and knowledge-based game shows, and are decidedly deficient in the quality of menace • there was a point (no doubt, partially due to Rutger Hauer's appearance in the film) when I thought this film was paying some tribute to Blade Runner's soundtrack, with its pulled-inside-out gongs and weird sounds, and in certain scenes, with the Blade Runner look, with the sudden plunge into chiaroscuro darkness in the apartment of the former Mr. Universe Maciste, played by Hauer. I think the eroticism the other IMDb reviewer touched on should be qualified as very cinematographic and not especially pornographic. Bianca becomes as beautiful and exotic as an oiled, living sculpture in the setting of the blind man's dark mansion—which bears some resemblance to the rambling, toy-filled apartment of J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner.Still, I was quite uneasy with being asked to accept Maciste as a good guy when he has apparently been buying teen prostitutes for some time, because he treats Bianca nicely and feeds her. It also felt like the final reel fell off the truck on the way to the editing studios; suddenly we wrap up, with one brief sequence, perhaps, supporting why the Bianca of "The Future" has labelled herself as a criminal at this time in her life. We don't get to know what happened to blind Maciste when he followed her out of his refuge of many decades. What? Either an art house ending or maybe the money ran out.