Here is a Spanish YA romance based on a novel by Mercedes Ron, famous (or perhaps notorious) for the My/Your/Our Fault saga. This time, we have Kami (Alícia Falcó), a confident, attractive cheerleader at her local high school with a huge following on social media, and an angry jock boyfriend who is none too pleased when her attention wanders towards a couple of handsome brothers who have just begun attending the school. Younger brother Thiago (Fernando Lindez) is in the same year as Kami, while the older Taylor (Diego Vidales) joins as a coach, and immediately begins behaving in a variety of ways inappropriate to his pastoral role. It quickly emerges that Kami and the brothers have some sort of dark and contentious history, hinted at in flashbacks and gradually revealed in full across the course of the run time.
Coming off like a scrambled-together mix of the love-triangle elements of Twilight with the elite social milieu of The OC, much is made of the idea that Kami is attracted to both brothers, despite Thiago being a sweet lad who is clearly into Kami, and Taylor being someone who is constantly brooding and growling and treating everybody badly. It doesn’t really seem like all that tough of a choice, though the film runs hard with the idea that Taylor’s behaviour, which contains enough red flags to supply bunting to an entire village fete, is justified by the strength of his feelings. Hmm.
It’s hard to feel super invested in which brother Kami will choose: she’ll pick either the nice one or the nasty one, and a more psychologically complex drama could no doubt invest the dilemma with more penetrating insights. And speaking of penetrating insights, the film’s attitude to sex proves something of a curate’s egg: it’s spicier than most American teen movies, but falls short of offering anything more than titillation. Multiple scenes (bratty cheerleader’s phone confiscated by strict coach, horny teens get carried away in sex-ed class, etc) play like porn-film scenarios, but then peter out. That wouldn’t matter much if the standard of the writing was higher, but most of the time, it isn’t.
• Tell Me Softly is on Prime Video from 12 December.
