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Lucio Castro’s debut feature End of the Century is in love with love. It is a story about the everlasting nature of fleeting romance. In it, Ocho (Juan Barberini), a newly single traveller in Barcelona meets Javi (Ramon Pujol). After sharing a passionate night together, they remember that they had a similar encounter twenty years earlier in the same city. At the conclusion of their first fling, Ocho left Javi a note from David Wojnarowicz’ memoir, Close to the Knives, stating that, for him, reaching his destination is akin to death and he needs to remain forever in transition, “disconnected and unfamiliar”. When he returns to Barcelona two decades later, he is still a stranger in the city, digitally documenting its beauty from afar, but even this act shows that he has not transformed much in the intervening years. He has gone from being a business student who wishes to write, to becoming a marketer who wishes to write. There is a sadness in the early moments of the film as he wanders the streets silently, surrounded by others engaged in conversation both physically and digitally. His Airbnb reflects his state of being; the fridge is barren; the tiles on the wall are conflicted, pointing in opposite directions. Everything changes when he sees Javi and follows him to the beach and for the first time he looks out to see an endless horizon sparkling in the sunlight.

There is a clear distinction between single life and the romantic life in End of the Century: the juxtaposition of the loud intimacy of sex with the quiet guilt of masturbation. When Ocho is alone, he stands on his balcony drinking beer, but when he is with Javi, they sit above the world enjoying wine and cheese. This was true of their previous meeting too; the ecstasy is palpable as they dance to ‘Space Age Love Song’ by A Flock of Seagulls, inching closer and closer as the song builds. Despite their time together being almost magical, they can’t stay together. Originally, because Ocho does not want to reach his destination, later because Javi has reached his – he is in an open marriage and has a daughter. Ocho informs Javi that he has recently gotten out of a 20-year relationship, as he is still searching for the freedom he desired during their first encounter. When questioned about whether he still enjoys being single, Ocho seems unsure about the answer. A lot has changed during the preceding decades, but he remains almost the same, losing his desire to have children or maybe just his hope of having them, perhaps realising that by remaining in a state of transition for too long it has become his destination. He realises that in this time he has evolved from being “ “too young to hold on” to becoming “too old to just break free and run”. He cannot change his life, so he imagines a different life, one in which he remained with Javi and raised a family with him, but even this alternative ending to their story offers no guarantee of happiness and he regretfully returns to reality. Would their connection have remained magical, or was their connection magical because they missed it and memories are always sweeter than reality?

After their first day together, a t-shirt descended from the heavens into their arms. Twenty years later it still connects them: a memento of lost love and the beating heart of a beautiful movie.

End of the Century opens at the IFI on February 21.