A young Russian woman named Natasha is soon to be married and is on holiday in Rome where she meets Alba. She accompanies Alba to her hotel room as a curious acquaintance and stays as a growing friend. In this room in Rome, the two women come to know one another intimately over the course of the night, and explore and discover themselves along the way. Only the break of day threatens to break their newly forged bond.
Written by
~mep1 (mEp)
Plot Synopsis:
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Alba (Elena Anaya), a 30-something Spanish tourist in Rome, seduces a younger Russian woman Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) to come back to her hotel room during their last night of vacation in Rome. The details of how they met in a club are left vague. In Alba's hotel room, Natasha is at first quite reluctant, insisting she's straight, but the clearly more experienced Alba handles deftly around Natasha's hesitance. Flattered and tempted by Alba, Natasha responds to her sexual advances, but continues to maintain that she is straight and has never had sex with a woman. Alba counters by claiming that she is a lesbian and has never had sex with a man.

Alba and Natasha first get undressed and into bed, but Natasha is still very nervous. Alba suggests that they first lay side by side and only casually touch each other's faces. They do so until Alba becomes so relaxed that she falls asleep. Natasha quietly gets out of bed, gets dressed and leaves the room, wondering what would have happened if she stayed and consummated her curiosity and attraction to Alba.

In her rush to leave, Natasha leaves her cell phone behind, and the ring-tone wakes up Alba. Natasha soon returns and asks Alba for her cell phone, but is reluctant to enter the room again. When a passing night-shift waiter named Max passes by, Alba grabs Natasha and takes her back into the room. While talking about the location of Natasha's hotel and looking at an old map of Rome from the 1st century, Alba continues to flirt with Natasha with her naked body. Natasha soon succumbs to her attraction and curiosity towards Alba, leading her to get undressed once again and into bed where she and Alba have sex for the first time.

Over the next 10 hours, Alba and Natasha grow closer to each other as Natasha becomes more relaxed and comfortable around Alba with their lovemaking. Alba and Natasha share stories, periodically stopping to illustrate their points with pictures on the Internet, talk about the artwork in the hotel room, and explore each other's nude bodies through sex. Alba first tells a story about how her mother abandoned her when she was a little girl and she ended up as the kept woman of a wealthy Arab in Saudi Arabia, while Natasha later shares a story of her abusive father and her twin sister's career as an art historian.

Eventually, the two women tell each other the truth. Natasha reveals that her real name is Dasha that she is actually a professional tennis player on vacation and is to be married the following week in Russia to a man. Natasha's twin sister, Sasha, a model and career actress, phones her at least twice during the film to ask of her whereabouts and wedding plans. Alba then reveals that she is an actually a mechanical engineer/inventor in Rome on business and she lives with a woman in San Sebastian, Spain. Alba shows Natasha a video of herself and her life partner, named Edurne, who has two small children, a little boy and girl, and whom are of Basque origin. Alba also says that the little boy died recently in a drowning accident.

Natasha and Alba have breakfast together at dawn, which is served by the cheerful room service waiter, Max. They discuss abandoning their partners and living together in Rome, but both seem to realize that this is not possible. While Alba tells Natasha that she feels she is falling in love with her, Natasha gets more defensive and insists that her attraction to Alba only stems from attraction and curiosity towards the same sex, but not through love.

After making love for one last time and holding and kissing each other in a long embrace, the two one-time lovers eventually decide to part ways, returning to their previous lives in Russia and Spain and agree to let the passionate night they shared remain a secret between them. In the final shot, after leaving the hotel and walking away from each other, Natasha calls out to Alba and runs towards her to show off her sprint running skills.... leaving their parting ambiguous to if they will ever meet again.

Julio Medem wrote the part of Alba for Elena Anaya. When the actress accepted the role, she and Medem went to Russia to cast the perfect Dasha. After seeing a lot of actresses and models, they found the perfect one, but the night before this woman was to fly to Spain to start rehearsals, her husband read the screenplay and forbade her to play the role which involved nudity and lesbian lovemaking scenes. However, after returning from Russia dejected, Medem and Anaya found Russian-born model Natasha Yarovenko while casting in Spain, specifically in Barcelona, who accepted the role.
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When Alba tells Dasha that her two-wheeled vehicle is called the "Aspasia," Dasha smiles and says she knows after whom it was named. Aspasia was the lover (and maybe wife) of Pericles, the leader during Athen's Golden Age in the Fifth Century B.C. when the arts flourished and the Parthenon was built.
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Five different languages are spoken in the movie; English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Basque. English is the primarily language spoken by the two lead characters, Elena and Natasha, to each other. Elena talks to herself in her native Spanish, and Natasha talks to herself in her native Russian. Natasha speaks fluent Italian (to the hotel staff). Except for Basque (one line is spoken by Elena), Natasha is shown to speak fluent English, Russian, and Italian and seems to understand Spanish while Elena is speaking it to her on occasion (despite that Natasha doesn't have a single phrase of Spanish in the movie), but it never becomes clear whether Natasha can speak Spanish too.
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The song sung by Natasha/Dasha and Alba in the shower is "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu," commonly known as "Volare" in the U.S. It was a worldwide hit (including number one in the U.S.) for Domenico Modugno in 1958. The lyrics describe a dream that the singer knows will never happen again in which he is painted blue and flying ("volare") and singing ("cantare") in the sky. A non-literal English translation of the song was a hit by Bobby Rydell in the U.S. in 1960.
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The satellite image for the fictional "Pompeo Hotel" is a fake, the image is photoshopped from the location 41°54'2" N 12°28'14" E. The place where the hotel in the movie is located is a empty street. The fictional island "Ostrov Nekrasov" is a photoshopped image from the location +54° 33' 31.23", +48° 49' 59.46". And Alba house is a photoshopped image from the location +43° 18' 50.30", -1° 59' 27.57".
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The voice of Sasha, Natasha's (real name Dasha) twin sister is actually voiced by the same actress Natasha Yarovenko which was pre-recorded during post production.
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Based on the premise of Matias Bize's chilean film "En La Cama"
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Before the end credits there is a shot showing a satellite image of the hotel balcony being zoomed out. If you compare this image to a real satellite picture available on the internet it turns out that it is accurate but filmmakers have added the hotel to the picture. At the spot where the hotel is located in the movie there is a square in reality.
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In what's meant to be the same scene shown from two different angles, when Natacha's sat on the balcony, she can be seen from the bathroom, but not vice versa where there's a curtain in the way and it's clearly a separate set as there's no trace of the bedroom.
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