# Krámpack (2000)

### reviewed by
Laura Clifford

    NICO AND DANI (Krampack)
    ------------------------

Sixteen year old Dani's (Fernando Ramallo) riding high. He lives in an arresting modern home with a pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It's the onset of summer vacation, his trusting parents are leaving him to take a trip to Egypt and his best friend is coming out from the city to join him in the Cannes 2000 Critics Week award winner, "Nico and Dani (Krampack)."

Adapted from Jordi Sanchez's play by director Cesc Gay and Tomas Aragay, the Spanish "Nico and Dani" is an honest, warm and funny coming of age tale in which two best friends come to a crossroads together only to take different paths.

Dark and scrawny Nico (Jordi Vilches) begins strutting his macho stuff, from dreams of becoming a motorcycle racing mechanic to boasting about the size of his Adam's apple. Nico and Dani share nightly masturbation rituals (the titular Krampack), where Nico teaches Dani that numbing one's hand first by sitting on it allows one to believe the hand belongs to another. What Dani shares with Nico is of a far more personal nature and Nico goes along under cloud of sexual experimentation.

When the duo meet the brazen Elena (Marieta Orozco) and shy, virginal Berta (Esther Nubiola), Nico sets to pairing the foursome off and making dates while Dani gets increasingly annoyed that the two don't spend more time alone together. Dani has an unsatisfying encounter with a drunken Berta, then begins to spend time with an older, homosexual writer who's a client of his father's (in a neat parallel, Dani's treated much the same as he treated Berta).

"Nico and Dani" is refreshing after the lowbrow sniggering found in American teen sex comedies. These kids act like real teenagers - young enough to still romp and play, old enough to want to appear sophisticated and sexually desirable (amusingly enough, not too far afield from how the film's adults are portrayed).

Blond, blue-eyed Fernando Ramallo plays Dani with an air of seriousness, appropriate considering his character is facing a more difficult lifestyle choice than his buddy. Newcomer Jordi Vilches (a circus performer!) is hilarious as the confidently goofy Nico. He walks a line between oblivousness and acceptance. The film is given a bright, sunny look by cinematographer Andreu Rebes and a lively, unusual score by Riqui Sabates.

"Nico and Dani" succeeds in portraying a difficult and confusing time in human development with humor, compassion and truth.

    B

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