Lovesickness Shows the Unpredictable Results of Passion

As we all know, love can do silly things to people. As much as you may try to control who you fall in love with and what you do to pursue that love, sometimes your passion makes you do things that you'd normally never do. Instead of being a joyous feeling, it feels more like an illness. In Lovesickness (Maldeamores), directors Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz and Mariem Perez explore this illness via three stories that take place around Puerto Rico. The film debuted at Tribeca on Friday.

While the story threads of Lovesickness do not meet at any point in the film, Ruiz and Perez intersperse scenes from each story throughout the film, shifting the viewer smoothly from story to story and back again. The stories all involve love triangles of one form or another. In the best-acted and most well-formed story, 72-year-old Flora (Silvia Brito) suddenly finds she has two men competing for her love: her grouchy ex, Cirilo (Chavito Marrero), with whom she shares a house, and her charming first ex, Pellín (Miguel Ángel Álvarez), who left her 35 years ago. Pellín comes to stay with them at the house he still technically co-owns (but Cirilo is proud to say that he "owns the furniture") and all sorts of childish games break loose as the two men fight over Flora.

As with most stories involving love among the elderly, the reaction is inevitably the same as if the audience saw a basket full of puppies and kittens: "Awww, that's so adorable!" But there's some real angst and sadness within this triangle, mainly because all three participants realize that this may be the last fling any of them has. It's well-acted -- especially the uncomfortable soup slurping Cirilo and Flora do throughout the film -- funny, and really puts the viewer in the position of rooting for either gentleman to get the girl, even if that girl is old enough to be that viewer's grandmother.

The other two stories aren't as well-developed, but are entertaining. In one story, a woman named Lourdes (Theresa Hernández) inadvertently finds out on the way to her grandmother's funeral that her husband Ismael (Luis Guzmán, probably the only actor in this movie American audiences would recognize) and her cousin Tati (Ednali Figueroa) are having an affair. In the third story, Miguel (Luis Gonzaga) a lonely man henpecked by his over-attentive mother, takes an entire bus hostage so he can marry Marta (Dolores Pedro), the driver he has obsessively loved from afar.

There are elements of both stories that are enjoyable: Ismael's son Ismaelito (Fernando Tarazzo) is fun to watch as he passes judgment on his father's affair, as well as his sweet little-kid attempts to get to know his cousin better. The hostage story has the least-satisfying and least-amusing story arc, but the crushing loneliness suffered by Miguel is palpable; he sort of reminded me, both emotionally and physically, of Vince D'Onofrio's character of Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, and the notion that he may turn violent at any second carried me through the very thin plot.

Lovesickness is sweet and sad all at once. But if you've ever suffered through unrequited love, the stories will ring true with you, at least in some part of your psyche.

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.