The title of the Spanish comedy I can’t live without you (now on Netflix) is double-edged: the sentiment is directed at the main character’s wife and her cell phone. Spanish TV veteran Adrian Suar plays a hopeless tech addict, and Paz Vega (Talk to her) is the wife who, tired of being second fiddle to text messages, takes her leave as if it were a call in a rural area where there is no signal for a cell tower. The premise seems ripe for a bit of satire or social commentary, but does it have ambitions to say anything we haven’t already heard?
I can’t live without youSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: The credits sequences show groups of people in various settings (airports, streets, stores, even KIDS in PLAYGROUNDS where they should be PLAYING) staring at their phones. Read: Society has gone to hell! Then, we meet our protagonist in a scene that is, no doubt, quite familiar to many of us: Carlos (Saur) wakes up, immediately reaches for his phone, and panics when he can’t find it. The scene becomes a heavily metaphorical microcosm of his life: he finds the phone under the covers, and his sleeping wife, Adela (Vega), rolls over on top of him and gets cozy with it not because he’s stricken with desire for her, but out of a desire to check his email or whatever. Is this Strike One or Strike 100? I don’t know, but she’s not at all thrilled about playing second fiddle to a shitty screen.
Background: Carlos and Adela have been together for a couple of decades. Empty nests await them: they have two children who are about to move to Milan for college. She’s a doctor and he’s an office worker at an investment firm or something. Transitions, transitions, everywhere there are transitions. Whatever he does – corporate takeovers or something? Who’s to say? The important thing is that he’s on the verge of a major movie cliché – i.e. he’s about to be made partner at the firm. And THAT’s the reason he needs to sneak out of Adela’s sister’s wedding to make an important call on a Saturday afternoon. He’s got the wedding rings in his pocket for no reason he can discern. And when Adela finds him, she snatches the phone from him and throws it into the pond; he sets off to find it like a complete idiot blamed by his father.
Carlos doesn’t seem to understand the symbolism of the day: marriage, commitment, fulfillment. Or the lack of the latter two, as the case may be. Adela packs her bags and ignores Carlos’ desperate pleas. He goes to a support group for cell phone addicts (is it full of lovable dorks? Of course it is!) and is hesitant at first, but before you know it, he finds himself in a montage of doing completely ridiculous things like riding a bike, reading, writing letters to his kids, and listening in on work meetings instead of scrolling. Who DOES these things? It’s the 21st century! But it’s what he has to do to win Adela back. Oh, and he still wants to be a partner at the firm. Can Carlos have it all? NO SPOILERS!
What movies will it remind you of? Didn’t Netflix cover this topic in a documentary? The social dilemma? Well, take that and cross it with The breakup either The First Wives Club or something like that.
Performance worth watching: This is some pretty flimsy stuff for Vega, so here’s a reminder to rewatch it. Talk to her either Sex and Lucia.
Memorable dialogue: Carlos talks to the female voice search/assistant bot on his phone:
Carlos: How can I get my wife back?
Phone: Sorry Carlos, I can’t help you with that.
Carlos: You’re not so smart after all.
Sex and skin: None! That’s part of the problem here. Carlos!!
Our opinion: The centerpiece of I can’t live without you Carlos tries to maintain two ruse at once, between a family dinner and a video call that is crucial to his being named partner at the firm. The film is meant to be a bit far-fetched, but it comes off as boring and silly, an overlong sequence that delivers an irritatingly obvious message about work-life balance, a missive that pours into a thematic channel that also asserts how technology addiction fuels capitalist ambition. Carlos pursues material and therefore spiritually empty rewards; he neglects his family; he is also a compulsive reader who drops everything to spend too much money on the newest, fanciest phone on the market. This, the film claims, is bad.
I can hear you now: Tell me something I don’t know. The film might have been more successful if it didn’t seem so simplistic in its subject matter, or if it were more committed to creating a comedy that didn’t seem so hopelessly reliant on clichés. If director Santiago Requejo is aiming for satire, he doesn’t quite make it. If he’s aiming for a poignant commentary on modern life, well, he doesn’t quite make it either. I can’t live without you It’s the story of a pleasant enough loser who takes 90 minutes of movie time to reframe his life beyond dead battery/recharge metaphors, and it’s ultimately too cheerful and bland in writing and acting to leave much of an impression.
Our calling: You can live without it. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
