Jean-Pierre Limosin’s 2002 feature “Novo” is finally getting a U.S. release. The film focuses on Graham, a photocopy clerk with a short-term memory. He literally forgets everything that happened to him within minutes, and he needs to write down names and places in a small notebook in order to navigate his way through the world.
Now, of course, this sounds an awful lot like “Memento.” But unlike that movie, the French-Swiss-Spanish-Italian co-production “Novo” opts for a Eurotrash sex comedy approach instead. Graham’s inability to remember anything is seen as the ultimate erotic turn-on by his hot-to-trot boss, a chic young temp and a mysterious woman hovering on the periphery of the story who might be a lot closer to Graham than anyone realizes.
Handsome Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega is Graham, and this Iberian eye candy seems to be enjoying himself as the amnesiac boy toy to the likes of Nathalie Richard, Anna Mouglalis and Paz Vega (and they are all very fine to watch). Limosin’s romantic interludes are rather frank and steamy and frequent; in fact, the film gets carnal within five minutes of the opening. The film’s intercourse detours will satisfy the voyeurs who stumble onto this film – and let’s face it, there’s nothing better to simultaneously please one’s intellectual pretensions and lascivious depravity than watching smut with subtitles.
(Yes, this review is on the short side. But there’s really not more worth saying about “Novo.”)
