The Strong Ones [Los Fuertes] **** (2019, Samuel González, Antonio Altamirano, Marcela Salinas) – Classic Movie Review 13,382

The intense, bitter-sweet 2019 Chilean romantic drama film The Strong Ones [Los Fuertes] stars Samuel González and Antonio Altamirano as handsome, earnest young men who meet and suddenly fall into an overwhelming passion and romance.

Writer/ director Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo’s intense, bitter-sweet 2019 Chilean romantic drama film The Strong Ones [Los Fuertes] stars Samuel González and Antonio Altamirano as Lucas and Antonio, handsome, earnest and sincere young men who meet and suddenly fall into an overwhelming passion and romance. It seems like it could last a lifetime, but Lucas is just visiting and Antonio feels he has to stay put. Their love could change all that, if they let it. The film is infused with melancholy, sadness and frustration, but it is also sexy, soulful and passionate.

The Strong Ones [Los Fuertes] is a beautiful film, with its entire focus on the two men, who share great chemistry. It runs slow, but deep and strong. It is totally simple and straightforward, but right there all the time. It is gorgeously shot by Nicolás Ibieta in the city of Valdivia and neighbouring Niebla. Gabriela Fernández is appealing as Adriana, Antonio’s grandmother and guardian after the death of his parents. Marcela Salinas makes the best of a rather dreary role as Lucas’s sister Carolina.

Lucas (Samuel González), an architect from Santiago, estranged from his conservative parents because of his homosexuality, travels to Niebla, a remote town in southern Chile, to visit his dentist sister Carolina (Marcela Salinas) before leaving for Montreal, Canada, where he has received the rare opportunity of a scholarship for postgraduate studies.

But while in Niebla, Lucas befriends and falls deeply in love with local young fisherman Antonio (Antonio Altamirano), who works on a fishing boat as a boatswain for another fisherman but would like his own business, and also acts in period costume as a Chilean soldier in historical re-enactments of the Capture of Valdivia to entertain tourists visiting the town’s fortress.

Their sincerity and love of life oozing from every pore, as their tidal-wave love ebbs and flows, Lucas and Antonio are great role models.

Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo bases it on the short film San Cristóbal, winner of the Teddy Award 2015 in the Berlin International Film Festival, which also stars González and Altamirano.

The Strong Ones premiered as the opening film of the Valdivia International Film Festival in 2019 and then screened in international festivals like OutFest and Mardi Gras Film Festival. It was released on 12 March 2020 in Chile cinemas but the COVID-19 pandemic shut most cinemas a few days later. Finally, it was released for free in the Ondamedia streaming platform on 21 August 2020.

It was filmed in the city of Valdivia and neighbouring Niebla, where the old Spanish fortress is a background for the romance. The Spanish title Los Fuertes is a pun using the plural of fuerte, meaning ‘strong’ or ‘fortress’.

The cast

The cast are Samuel González as Lucas, Antonio Altamirano as Antonio Galindo, Marcela Salinas as Catalina, Gabriela Fernández as Adriana,  Rafael Contreras as Catalina’s partner Martín, and Nicolás Corales as Antonio’s shipmate Roca.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,382

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