‘Live is Life’ Netflix Movie Review - Neither Revolutionary Nor Self-Discovery

Live is Life is a slice-of-life drama movie directed by Dani de la Torre. It revolves around the events of one summer when five friends are reunited as they spend time together when Rodri returns to the city for summer vacation. It is where they decide to go on an adventure to locate a mythical plant with medicinal values.

Driven by an experience-centric narrative, it feels like the movie had a tale of its own to tell, very different from its execution. It didn’t have much to offer in terms of major components that you would expect from the genre. The main issue with the movie is its intensity in both the writing and the screenplay. For a major part, the flow at which the events occur remains very constant with little to no deviation. It’s almost like being stuck in one frame where the story doesn’t move, and the context of the situation doesn’t matter since you are watching the same scene repeatedly. Due to the lack of engagement the movie warrants, the difficulty level of certain situations isn’t on by audiences at the required level. This wastes the potential prospects of exploring certain themes like emotional vulnerability more often, even if it had the opportunity to do so since the script does not build on these feelings enough. Some moments resemble the necessary response required and make you feel connected to the situation momentarily, but their overall input remains far too low as the movie opts on indulging the antics of the entire gang of friends instead.

The entire first half of the movie plays out on a very limited idea with it sticking to its fundamental motive, with little or no variation in the spectrum of possibilities as it fails to identify the potential of ‘discovery’, and remains more ceased on escaping from the gang of bikers and the danger they are faced with on the trip. It’s more or less a cat and mouse game till then with each side motivated on getting revenge on the other. It is not until the second half that the movie starts to take advantage of the characters and their backstories which had been set up quite towards the beginning. Astonishingly, the script doesn’t play to its strength until much late, and when it does it completely disregards the impact of contemplation in its journey.

The dynamics around the group were well documented as the movie derives its basic meaning from their ‘brotherly’ relationship that insists on upholding the value of togetherness. Each character is explained satisfactorily enough to the point one can get a glimpse of the psyche if not their personalities. What it does miss is analyzing the group conflicts as each of the group decisions is bent towards reaching consensus through group conformity extinguishing the sense of difference of opinion. There are no specific layers to the group identity other than that of the surface level.

In conclusion, this could have prospered on the vulnerabilities of the respective characters and their situations given the lack of touching moments. It constantly inflicts damage onto itself by not explaining itself well to the very things it builds upon, which otherwise could have been a good watch.

Final Score – [6/10]
Reviewed by - Devyansh Anand
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