Desire (in English) is a film directed by Teresa Simone
Since this film deals with that topic in particular, I’m going to put together a list of movies featuring infidelity: Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993), Unfaithful (2002), Notes on a Scandal (2006), The Other Man (2008), Obsessed (2009), Chloe (2010), No Good Deed (2014), The Perfect Guy (2015), When The Bough Breaks (2016), and I’ll even add the German film Fall for Me (2025).
And I can guarantee you that all of these movies are far better than this one!
Lucero and Fernando are the perfect couple in the eyes of those around them, but the truth is quite different behind closed doors. That’s where Matias, their daughter Viviana’s swim coach, enters the picture… There’s no need to dwell on a weak and predictable plot that recycles all the clichés of the genre, like the lover who becomes an antagonist when things don’t go his way.
The lackluster revelations never add any spice to a situation that’s laughable and never titillating—even though that’s the intended goal. An erotic thriller can definitely be fun to watch, provided the thriller part is well-done, which is definitely not the case here. It feels like a bad TV movie with a few racy scenes thrown in. It’s predictable and uninteresting. I started bursting out laughing right in the middle of the movie because it had become so over-the-top and ridiculous. In any case, the situation gets more and more twisted and reaches some pretty crazy heights! I admit that I regularly give Spanish films a chance, but this time, I found myself wondering if it wasn’t actually a French film.
Le Désir could have been a fairly successful erotic thriller if it had skillfully played with tension and manipulation. We follow a married lawyer whose life is turned upside down when she gets close to her daughter’s swim coach. From that encounter on, everything snowballs: lies, psychological pressure, risky decisions… and a gradual descent into chaos. Despite the fact that all of this sounds thrilling, I came away completely disappointed. And I can see why this movie isn’t a hit!
Spoiler: The movie features several plot twists, but they aren’t necessarily well thought out. Okay, they’re sometimes hard to predict, which keeps things interesting at the beginning, but not by the end. Between tension, seduction, and manipulation, we clearly wouldn’t have had time to get bored… but the exact opposite happens.
Some aspects remain unclear and leave a few questions unanswered, which can be pretty frustrating. But, in the end, what sticks with me most is a pretty clear moral: be careful who you hire… and who you let into your life! Yeah! Even if it’s nothing very original…
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