Cinélatino
Rencontres de Toulouse, 2012
Absolute
BeginnersBy Giulia Dobre
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"Thursday till Sunday" (Dominga Sotomayor)
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Nowhere could the gentle yet bright sunshine of spring spice up a
film festival more than in Toulouse, the pinkish-ochre citadel of the Southwest
France.
Rencontres du Toulouse celebrated its 24th edition with a fresh
programme of brand new films. For every production from each of the festival's
sections, there was a full house made up of a joyful crowd of international
students, academics, culturally-aware ladies enjoying their second youth,
ancient quixotic revolutionaries with white beards, sharing their observations
in the mellifluous accents of the South of France.
The surrounding joie de vivre was not
matched, though, by the new Latin American films the festival presented.
The very young directors of these
productions are still beginners, and chose to treat topics which mainly express
their personal worries and social engagement. There were no half measures in
these films: they were breathless and stubborn. Their characters are very young:
students keen on ideology, who make unambiguous and excruciating choices, who
are immersed to the bones in the transgressions of the society in which they
live. They are callous worrywarts who do not complain or head for greener
pastures; instead, they prefer to solve problems, to be an active part of the
agora, to explain and be explained, even to refuse and to destroy.
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"Thursday till Sunday" (Dominga Sotomayor)
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The first feature of Chilean director
Dominga Sotomayor, Thursday till
Sunday (De Jueves a Domingo) chose to investigate the crumbling
marriage of Ana and Fernando. Bitterness and lack of communication fill in every
space in what ought to have been a relaxed and sentimental journey they with
their kids to find the a tract of land belonging to the father's family. The
couple have fallen out of love, and the bare lands they travel through mirror
their relationship. The sweet magic of their children's behavior, with their
questions, answers, funny situations and spontaneity, cannot repair the broken
bridges. The father has already rented another apartment; the mother encounters
a friend from her active and colorful youth and seems to confide in him far more
than in her husband.
Their 10-year-old daughter observes
everything, understands partially, suffers and yet tries to plan for a near
future together, projects to pursue with both parents. And here is what triggers
the empathy of any spectator from any part of the globe: it is an experience of
life where a child observes with his own, incomplete yet unbeatable lucidity a
world made by and for adults.
Sotomayor does not judge. She simple
allows the stories to unfold around her characters, just as the camera records
their adventure in the wild with distance and objectivity. Yet the freshness and
intensity of the acting cannot make up for a certain ambiguity in the writing.
The spectator is barely absorbed and feels too little for these characters that
most of the time seem to rehearse a play of their actual life, rather than
living it fully.
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"A Secret World" (Gabriel Mariño)
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The lack of audience empathy continues
with A Secret World (Un Mundo
Secreto) by Mexican director Gabriel Mariño. The film follows the personal
journey of a high school graduate, a journey which sees her move from saying YES
to every request to finally refusing and saying NO when she needs to. She is a
dreamer and a promiscuous girl, who hopes to find her path by breaking out of
the circle of her acquaintances and getting away from her normal habits. She
therefore embarks on a trip from Mexico City's urban chaos to the deserts of
Sinaloa and the vast ocean of La Paz. She is just a girl lost in a world of
strangers, where even her mother and close friends care for her for the wrong
reasons: there is a profound lack of affection in her life. By the last shot,
something has changed, though, as suggested by the inverted position of the
camera. The dramatic construction is destroyed by a long series of close-ups and
playing games with the focus.
This is, unfortunately, a notable
characteristic of the majority of new Latin American films at Cinélatino: an
almost maniacal game of lenses that involuntarily excludes the audience from the
action, instead of implicating them even more! I must say, too, that I was
disturbed by the films' excessive use of music, which makes the film more of a
visual companion for the predominant text of the songs. It leaves an impression
of a playful film made during the director's film school years.
In To the Sky (Al Cielo), Diego Prado orchestrates a
scenic and minimalistic drama. His teenage male character is a person that finds
a way to bear the world, his family, his school, even his friendships, none of
which give him much to say. Finally, one day he meets another boy as shy and
creative as himself, and love springs. He finally finds words to say and
decisions to take. Diego Prado adopts a rare and fresh tone
in telling this story, set in the lush town of La Plata. The minor
everyday gestures of this boy's life are shot in a marvelously unpolluted
manner. The happy ending comes without extravaganza: it's just a very refreshing
moment for the viewer.
South American films of the past year
seem to be even more aware than their predecessors of the social turmoil the
directors and their characters live in. 3 of the films presented in competition
are organized around political disobedience, ideological power games, or even
the total abandon of any social fight. The
Destruction of the Ruling Order (La destrucción del orden vigente),
a film by new Argentinean film graduate Alejo Franzetti, follows the
misdemeanors of a pretty young woman through the rebellious underground groups
of Buenos Aires. Between punk rock, heavy drugs and endless anarchist
statements, the character trips from life to death and back again. It was a
rather appealing subject for the author, who ultimately failed in his artistic
journey for wanting to express too many subjects, too much in a limited
timeframe.
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"The Student" (Santiago Mitre)
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In spite of his absolute mastery of
directing, another young Argentinean director, Santiago Mitre, fails to move the
audience and take them along on his journey with his excessively dense film,
The Student (El Estudiante).
Portraying situations that are complicated and very much particular to Buenos
Aires' academic environment, extremely calculated and with overwhelming
dialogue, this film renders the complex web of personal ambitions and
maneuvering that fuels campus political life. The actor Esteban Lamothe is a
revelation as Roque, living and breathing his lead role with understated
confidence. And yet the vast complexity of the relationships and the games of
power make us disconnect and lose interest about halfway through the film.
With The Language of Machetes (El Lenguaje de
los machetes), Kyzza Terrazas brings a film that has been long awaited by
several successive generations. Generations that were waiting for an artist, and
especially a filmmaker, to express so properly, and without any judgement, the
terrible ‘mal de vivre' that we/they all experience. Terrazas' film circles
around a couple composed of a troubled journalist and a sado—masochist punk rock
singer. They have a grueling time finding out who they are, if they really care
about their professions, and how much they can expect from society and also give
back to it. Where does their own fight (both with themselves and with the
existing powers) start and how long should it last? Both characters feel a deep
unease, as if the skins they inhabit are too limiting. They sound and act like
apocalyptic spirits. As the director puts it: "Love, the desire to transform reality and failure in
both are thus the main themes of "El Lenguaje de los machetes". It is a film of
traces. Of disheveled gestures…Of frontal war. A case of nostalgia for
utopia…"
Therefore, though very in love with
each other, the couple swings between extreme passion and annulment, between
profound declarations, projects, and solitude.
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"The Language of Machetes" (Kyzza Terrazas)
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There is a lot of suffering for these
characters, a lot of failure, both as spectators of a society where violence is
omnipresent, and as persons unable to take a major step in their relationship.
They suffer to such an extent that they decide to play a final act in the
comedy/tragedy of their life, attacking one of the most important symbols of
Mexico and its colonization.
The Language of
machetes is a film that softly swings around the opposition between
Mexicans of white/European origin, the direct and financially privileged
descendents of blond and blue-eyed colonizers, and the local populations who
still live in a sort of slavery. But it also expresses the miscommunication
between urban and rural mentalities. For the latter, all change should come
through bloodshed, through a heavy violence that fills the air.
Music is perfectly employed in
The Language of machetes, for
sheer emphasis in some key moments. The camera work is all built on the contrast
of lights, colors and tones. It is without a doubt a film that has touched its
public, and we can only salute the emergence of an original and breezy filmic
philosopher such as Mr. Terrazas (already the author of two volumes of short
stories).
Employing a more classical manner of
filming and storytelling, Stories That Only
Exist When Remembered (Histórias que só existem quando lembradas)
and another Brazilian film, Southwest (Sudoeste), tell poignant
stories of lost and almost mythical generations of Brazil's provinces. Telling
about smaller or greater pains that have been buried, as well as more and less
important misdeeds, these two films offer some very well crafted images.
Stories That Only Exist When Remembered
explodes with lush legions of green that emphasize the moribund world that it
examines. In a remote village cut off from civilization, where trains have
stopped arriving, lives Madalena. She is an elderly woman lost in her past,
writing letters every day to her long-dead husband. Audacious actress Sonia
Guedes plays the intense Madalena. She knows exactly what to expect from life,
is totally aware of what she has lost, and determined to confront each and every
day with acts of near sado—masochism in order to continue to live.
Her life, like that of the other
villagers, is an uninterrupted routine until the day that Rita, a young
photographer, arrives. Rita builds a gentle bond with Madalena, and becomes the
conduit between past and present, vision and memory, lost and found.
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"Southwest" (Eduardo Nunes)
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Southwest (Sudoeste) has
chosen a Dreyer-esque black and white, shadowy type of image, with a coarsely
grainy film stock, in order to uncover implied stories of incest and repeated
abuse. It looks like an ancient Greek drama filmed by a playful spirit, where
expressionistic faces glide between real and dreamlike worlds. It is an emotive
film, a magic parable about a woman who lives her life in just one day. The
traveling camera that glides through long takes; the lateral black-and-white
shots and the repetitive background sounds of Eduardo Nunes' feature debut evoke
memories of the cinema of Andrei Tarkovski, Alexander Sokurov or Béla Tarr. It
is a complicated world, offering a mesmerizing embrace of real life and obscure
times. Here, Nunes captures what lies behind the visible, in a narrative that
alternates between Christian and non-Christian beliefs and magical stories.
A few years ago, the Argentinean
Armando Bo co-wrote with Alejandro González Iñárritu the award-winning Biutiful. For his own first feature Bo
has chosen the path of classical narrative. With very murky humor and perfect
rhythm, he tells the story of a singer from Buenos Aires who deeply believes
that he IS Elvis Presley. Seen through his eyes, Buenos Aires seems a city awash
in celebrity look-alikes: there's a Steven Tyler here, a Gene Simmons or a
Barbra Streisand there.
The downside of pursuing his passion
is the loss of his family — a failed marriage with Alejandra (Griselda
Siciliani) and estrangement from his daughter, named of course, Lisa Marie
(Margarita Lopez). When his wife and daughter are involved in a car accident,
the crisis situation brings them together, forming new intense ties between
father and daughter. This new—found love and meaning, though, seems not to be
enough for this colorful character, as he follows his determination to live and
die just like his idol. During this last chapter of the film, questions araise
in the spectator's mind: is this character for real? Is he really insane? The
writer-director achieves here one of the most stirring psychological portraits
seen in recent years, sustained by flawless direction skills and by dazzling
acting. Everything is filmed as in a state of grace, intentionally avoiding
dirt, self—pity or violence.
Latin-American indie cinema of the
past year remains, in general, at an elementary level, but some directors offer
whiffs of promise that are deeply commendable and worth following.
Giulia Dobre
© FIPRESCI 2012
Giulia Dobre is a visual anthropologist for the
Romanian National Radio and for several Romanian magazines and internet sites.
She trained as a BA, MA and PhD in Cinema Studies and Visual Anthropology at the
UNATC in Bucharest, San Francisco State and Berkeley University.
