‘Unexpected Loves’ Disney+ Review: Martín Bossi in Six Stories of Chance and Romance

Six episodes of what are now commonly called anthologies, but could just as easily be described as “standalone episodes” or “mini-movies,” Unexpected Loves consists of six relatively short stories starring Martín Bossi. As the series title suggests, they revolve around unexpected romantic relationships that emerge between people and situations that, at least initially, have nothing to do with one another, brought together by chance encounters or coincidences. With the humorous and, above all, sentimental sensibility that characterizes much of Marcos Carnevale’s work —as well as that of the actor— the series tells a collection of fairly formulaic, syrupy and overly traditional family and romantic stories.

In each episode, Bossi plays a different character. In the first (“Chori & Michi”), he is a thief who breaks into the home of a recently divorced woman (Jorgelina Aruzzi) and ends up developing a sort of relationship with her. In the second (“Washington & Sofía”), he plays a nurse who tries to reconnect a patient (Osvaldo Santoro) with his estranged daughter (Eleonora Wexler). In the third (“Julio César & Helena”), he is a restaurant waiter who becomes involved with an upper-class customer (Patricia Palmer), somewhat older than him, after an awkward situation.

The fourth (“Him & Her”) has a thriller-like atmosphere and revolves around a complicated romantic workplace affair involving two lovers (she is played by Lula Rosenthal) who become trapped at the location over Christmas. The fifth (“Andrea & Valeria”) returns to a more traditional slice-of-life approach, focusing on the relationship that develops between a tollbooth operator and a driver (Julieta Cardinali) who repeatedly passes through in her car. The sixth and final episode (“Bebe & Julia”) tells the story of a rather vain tennis instructor who seduces all of his female students, and Julia (Karina Hernández), one of them: a friendly, uninhibited woman who does not conform to the so-called “hegemonic” standards of beauty.

Unexpected Loves shifts tone and register from episode to episode —moving from comedy to drama, and from «costumbrismo» to suspense— but underneath it all, they are connected by the same somewhat sentimental and syrupy sensibility, one the series rarely manages to escape. Much like Guillermo Francella in Homo Argentum, Bossi plays different characters, but they all turn out to be fairly similar: self-absorbed, vain, with a strange mixture of accessibility and eccentricity. And all the women he becomes involved with, in one way or another, seem unable to resist his charms.

The final episode, perhaps the most likable of the bunch thanks to Karina Hernández’s charisma, presents the series’ central dilemma most clearly. A tennis instructor who seduces all his students and then “discards” them falls in love with one particularly friendly student who happens to be somewhat overweight. What the series never stops to ask is why she would fall for a man as vain and, let’s be honest, stupid as he is. And that problem, which recurs in almost every episode, is one the series never manages to answer. Not even in its most endearing moments.