Nicolas Lopez first got attention on the US festival circuit with his heartfelt and profane teenage comedy “Promedio Rojo,” then promptly vanished down a several-year hole called “Santos,” his follow-up film that accurately summed up many of Lopez’s geek fetishes but that also wore him out as a filmmaker.
He wisely took a step back and rebooted himself as a filmmaker, and in the process, he had one of the biggest hits in Chilean history with the bluntly-titled “F**k My Life.” The film is a wry and acutely-observed look at the way social media has changed the landscape of modern relationships, and the particular case of Javier and Sophia, a young couple whose break-up resonates through the lives of their friends and family.
If you weren’t able to catch “F**k My Life” at its various US festival appearances, it’s already been sold to HBO. In addition, Lionsgate is working with Pantelion to remake the movie for the US, and I’m curious to see how they handle the title of the remake. There’s no way they’ll release it here with that name, although it would certainly get people’s attention if they did.
In the meantime, Lopez has been a busy boy. He’s about to start shooting his new movie “Aftershock,” which is his first English-language film, a horror movie with Eli Roth producing. And before that, October will see the release of “F**k My Wedding,” the sequel, and now I’m curious to see if this is going to be a franchise that Lopez can return to over and over, examining different stages in the lives of these characters. Are we going to see “F**k My Kids” and “F**k My Job” and “F**k My Retirement” as they age?
F*CK MY WEDDING TRAILER from sobras producciones on Vimeo.
Whatever the case, I’m just glad to see that Lopez is back on track and working and finding an audience. One of the real pleasures of having covered movies for fifteen years now is watching different international markets explode from time to time, and Lopez has been one of the few guys to consistently keep Chile in the conversation. Here’s hoping we see “F**k My Wedding” at festivals sooner rather than later.