"Actor: Peru Medem"

• Lovers Of The Arctic Circle | DVD | (05/02/2007) from £8.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (100.11%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Destiny cannot be denied. Lovers of the Arctic Circle is a love story about Otto and Ana stretching from when they were just two kids to the abyss of Finland's arctic circle. The story goes full circle around a fleeting moment: the reflection of Otto's face in Ana's eyes. Renowned for his stunning films The Red Squirrel and Tierra Juilo Medem is a master of the unexpected. In Lovers Of The Arctic Circle Medem has fashioned a truly unique and unusual story of love and destiny told in the alternating voices of the two protagonists; Ana & Otto. The paths of the two lovers first cross at the age of eight when each is running away for different reasons. From that day on destiny chance and coincidence conspire to keep them both together and apart but never out of love. As Otto and Ana discover their feelings for each other they think they have reasons to justify their love but as they get closer they realize that a cyclical dream of chance near-misses and coincidence has brought them together. And their aim? To live together in a part of the world that defies justification and explanation a part of the world where the burning midnight sun makes every day seem endless... on the very edge of the arctic circle. Startling quirky and deeply romantic Lovers Of The Arctic Circle is Medem's most inventive work to date.

• Lovers Of The Arctic Circle | DVD | (24/07/2000) from £11.12   |  Saving you £8.87 (79.77%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Basque director Julio Medem makes films like no one else's. Quirky, audacious, visually startling, they play teasing games with themes of doubling and fate. Symbolism runs riot, ironies abound, narratives stop dead to focus on seemingly absurd details--and in fact the whole shebang would risk being terminally pretentious were it not for Medem's subversive humour, inviting us into the joke and daring us to take him seriously.Lovers of the Arctic Circle is typical of his idiosyncratic brand of free-wheeling fantasy. In Madrid, two foster-siblings grow up to find themselves gripped by irresistible, quasi-incestuous passion. Flashbacks reaching back to the Spanish Civil War show us how their destinies, those of the parents, and of their parents' lovers, have become entwined. The siblings are parted by circumstance, but seek each other out in Finland's Arctic north. Medem plays sleight-of-hand with doublings and wordplay, cutting deftly between the past, present and future, constantly challenging us to guess where he's heading next in the circling convolutions of his plot. --Philip Kemp