Now & Later

Martin Oaks

Nov 17, 2024 · via TMDB

★ 6.0

**Angela's intimate world** Angela is the epitome of a free and liberated woman—altruistic, intellectual, and sexually independent. She chooses her partners much like she selects a book from her shelf: with curiosity and care. As an undocumented immigrant living in a loft in the heart of Los Angeles, this Nicaraguan woman is running from a violent past. Now a nurse, she looks after her own—the forgotten and those truly in need. Angela is a pragmatist who lives strictly in the moment. She makes this perfectly clear to Bill, a former American banker bogged down by capitalist prejudices and a lifestyle built on hypocrisy. Their paths cross when she tries to help him, offering shelter while he flees the authorities on fraud charges. Bill surrenders to Angela's freshness, eloquence, and spontaneity as they spend hours talking and philosophizing about life, interspersed with lovemaking that initially feels foreign or even shameful to him. Angela exposes Bill to an uninhibited intimacy that gradually leads him to love. "Now & Later" normalizes sexuality, treating it as a natural part of everyday life. It depicts intimacy freely, without constraints or censorship. Meanwhile, the most reactionary and conservative pockets of the film press continue to condemn the movie as objectionable or indecent due to explicit sex scenes that, in reality, have nothing to do with pornography. This is precisely the kind of hypocrisy Angela repeatedly calls out when criticizing the conservative Western way of life. Unpretentious and grounded, "Now & Later" stands as a valid critique of modern American social clichés. It uses a measured, slow-burn pace that invites light reflection while bodies merge and inhibitions fade.