My take on the meaning of Sex and Lucía

I just watched Sex and Lucía for the second time, two decades after my first viewing. I don't remember what I made of it back then, but it was probably very different to how I view it now.

Sex and Lucía is about storytelling and how any story has multiple versions. A story is not created by the writer alone. Every reader or viewer will assign different significance to the events and details described, leading to different versions of the story in their imaginations. And, if you are not happy with your initial interpretation, you can "change course along the way". You can also go "back to the middle" and read/watch it again, which might result in a completely different story.

The movie itself, like any other story, has multiple interpretations:

There is a key scene in the middle where Pepe tells Lorenzo that he's going to give him a great gift. Pepe then tells Lorenzo about Luna and her presence in Madrid. It seems that Pepe's gift is helping his friend unite with the daughter he didn't know existed.

However, going "back to the middle" and watching it again might lead to a completely different interpretation. Pepe says "you get all your stories from me" and "it'll be the story of your life, and my birthday gift to you." These lines suggest that his gift is actually just an idea for Lorenzo's new novel. The story would be about a writer who is united with the daughter he didn't know existed. Luna, Elena and Belén are just fictional characters in the novel, while Lucía and Lorenzo exist in both the real world and as characters in the novel.

Another interpretation could be that even Lucía only exists in Lorenzo's imagination. The way they meet comes across like a male sexual fantasy: he is approached by a beautiful woman who professes to be madly in love with him, followed by days of wild sex. And as a writer's fantasy, Lucia strokes his ego by saying she's read his novel many times because it "grabbed me inside and won't let go" (despite the novel's apparent lacklustre success in reality).

Every viewer will have their own interpretation. Julio Medem is saying that these interpretations are all valid. He wrote the script, but the viewer's point of view is just as important to the final story.