Diego Boneta and Monica Barbaro live a romance in “At Midnight”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Love can arise when and where you least expect it, so watch the romantic comedy “At Midnight” starring Mexican actor Diego Boneta and American actress Monica Barbaro.

In the film, released this weekend on the Paramount+ streaming service, Boneta plays Alejandro, assistant manager of a luxury hotel in the Mexican Caribbean very dedicated to his work, who is asked by his boss to take care of a famous Hollywood woman. actress traveling to the region to shoot a film.

Barbaro is Sophie, the actress who travels to Mexico with her boyfriend Adam (Anders Holm), another famous movie actor with whom he stars in a superhero trilogy. But in reality, she is disappointed, after witnessing Adam’s infidelity, although she stays in the relationship because her publicists advise her to. Alejandro and Sophie’s paths cross at the hotel.

“To start with, I’ve been living in hotels for 15 years and when I was developing this…I was going with the manager to see if he could shade it, to kind of figure out what he needed to do,” said Boneta. said in a previous recent interview at the film’s premiere in the Mexican capital.

In her case, Barbaro had previously traveled to Mexico to see places where her maternal grandmother, who is Mexican, lived, but she had only been in the city for a few days.

“I hadn’t had Diego’s experience, it’s like meeting the chefs of every restaurant, he knows the history and he was telling me about Chapultepec castle, he gives you the best tour possible and we also work with a totally Mexican film crew, which was a gift,” the “Top Gun Maverick” actress said.

Boneta is the producer of the film along with Mexican director Michel Franco (“After Lucía”, “New Order”) and Fred Berger (“La La Land”). Jonah Feingold (“Dating & New York”) directs. The cast also includes Portuguese model Sara Sampaio and American actresses Whitney Cummings and Catherine Cohen, as well as Mexican actors Maya Zapata, Juan Manuel Bernal, Fernando Carsa and Concepción Márquez, and Argentinian actress Carolina Politi.

Boneta, whose mother is American and accompanied him on the blue carpet at the premiere, defines the film as “a love letter to Mexico”.

“I’m so proud to be Mexican, I love my country, my culture so much,” he said. “I love showing it all, the art, the food, the history and with this movie which was really cool, I can’t think of another Hollywood romantic comedy shot 100% in Mexico.”

Sparks of love erupt between Sophie and Alejandro, but they both have such complicated schedules and keep meeting their professional commitments, so their best dates are at midnight, hence the title of the film.

“They push each other to be the best version of themselves, to have passion and to be ambitious,” Barbaro said. “It’s a real giveaway because rom-coms don’t always do that, they almost always talk more about love, in which case love doesn’t take the rest of your life… You can have romance and live the rest of your life It’s beautiful,” the actress says.

Barbaro recalled that he once experienced something similar to Sophie, falling in love while working on a set.

“I think we’ve all had the experience of being in a place, exchanging glances and thinking, ‘what was that?’, and then living in the fantasy of what could be. “, did he declare.