This is an unexpected gem, as funny as it is wise. I'd literally never heard of the Acali. Fifteen years on, we were still reading Lord of the Flies at school, and all the grown-ups around me were nodding sagely. Had the media told the story this film tells instead of dubbing Santiago Genovés' ambitious project the sex raft, public opinion might have changed. The anthropologist expected his volunteers to develop aggressions towards each other during their long and lonely voyage. They didn't. So he did. Until he broke down and cried for the first time since childhood. He certainly learned something - about himself. I have rarely seen such a convincing demonstration of the self-help truism that aggression, anger and an overdeveloped need for control stem from repressed grief. Who would have thought that a macho man in his fifties could put us vs. them aside after all, and open up so far? Still, what touched me most was the reunion of the surviving volunteers, more than four decades later: most of all Captain Maria, against whom Genovés mutineered, and engineer Fé, whom he tried to set up with the Catholic priest on the expedition for no better reason than the colour of their skins. Fé's story, in particular, made me want to follow the advice an euphoric Genovés gives to everyone after it's all over: build your own raft! She really nailed it when she said (quoting from memory, sorry for any mistakes): I think Santiago's experiment was a huge success, but he missed it.
