El Mar

Unrequited homosexual yearning explodes in a coastal hospital just after the Spanish Civil War. Parental advisory: graphic violence and sex. Set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, El Mar tells the story of three young friends, Tur, Ramallo, and Francisca, who witness a brutal killing when a classmate avenges his father's assassination upon another schoolmate, and then kills himself shortly thereafter. This secret will haunt Tur, Ramallo, and Francisca for the rest of their lives. Years later, the muscled, womanizing Ramallo reunites with his childhood friends when all three find themselves quarantined in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Ramallo, hiding a secret rent-boy past, bristles against the mandatory isolation. Tur, now thin and pale, leans on religious fanaticism to avoid acting on his sexual urges towards Ramallo. Francisca, now one of the nuns, helps ease the pain of the dying. Together again in this lonely outpost by the sea, they revisit their dark childhood and quickly become tormented by death, religion, and sex.