Tú me abrasas is an adaptation of “Sea Foam”, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con Leucò” published in 1947. The ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet beside the sea and have a conversation about love and death. Sappho is said to have thrown herself into the ocean from lovesickness. Britomartis apparently tumbled off a cliff and into the water while fleeing from a man. Together, the two discuss the stories and images that have emerged around them to try and understand, at least for a moment, the bittersweet nature of desire. The film adapts not only the text but also footnotes and gaps in the story. For example, the fact that, in 1950, a desperate Pavese committed suicide in a hotel room with this book by his side. Or that Sappho’s poems have survived only in fragments. Or that sea foam is historically and scientifically associated with fertility and bacteria, that is, with life itself. “Everything dies in the sea and comes back to life,” says Britomartis. Tú me abrasas introduces new readings and translations that go beyond the myths by Pavese and Sappho.

A group of boys and girls settle in a country house. One of them writes a novel while the others try to become a gang and prepare a robbery: some fall in love, or seems to be, or believe they are in love. However, these two, three, ten plot lines unfold from what the characters hide or just don’t know. With a sense of humor and play that is both the characters’ and the film’s, They All Lie superimposes plot lines as if it were a tapestry from which a part is constantly hidden, revealing it later and changing its meaning.