La anti Nomadland. Tal vez por sobreabundancia o por su insistencia en revisitar los mismos temas, al director británico Ken Loach suele achacársele, un poco con certeza y otro poco con falacia, el imperdonable error de repetirse a sí mismo hasta el cansancio y hasta de agotar al espectador con su prédica contra las injusticias cometidas por el capitalismo salvaje contra una indefensa clase trabajadora. Doble ganador de la Palma de Oro por El viento que acaricia el prado (2006) y Yo, Daniel Blake (2016), Loach, quien ha construido una obra sólida y siempre comprometida con el realismo social británico (y global), retorna con una historia que no por repetida deja de tener relevancia. Al contrario, en un mundo donde la digitalización a rajatabla, la hiperconectividad y la inteligencia artificial parecen barrer inexorablemente con lo que queda de la humanidad que no goza de los beneficios de una educación o una capacitación IT, un film como Lazos de familia (anodina versión del contundente “Sorry We Missed You”, o algo así como “No pudimos concretar la entrega, póngase en contacto para concertar una nueva fecha”) es un verdadero cachetazo a los adalides del progreso tecnológico a toda costa, sin un rostro humano. En este escenario, donde la clase trabajadora no calificada pasa a ser simplemente un daño colateral inevitable, Lazos de familia ilustra con angustiante simpleza el destino de una familia de clase baja que se traslada de Manchester a Londres luego de que el padre de familia, Ricky, pierde su empleo en la construcción y, sin otra posibilidad, decide subirse (o hacer el “on-boarding”) al “nuevo” sistema de relaciones laborales en que no existen empleos, pero sí trabajos; donde no existen horarios, pero sí obligaciones contrarreloj; donde no se considera, no se concede ni se perdona un minuto de retraso y donde se abonan multas por problemas ajenos al trabajador. En suma, un mundo donde la creciente informatización pone al hombre al servicio de la máquina y vuelve a los humanos contra sus propios congéneres. Creador también de las multipremiadas Riff Raff y Tierra y libertad, que exploran el destino casi inexorable de las clases desposeídas, en Lazos de familia Loach, de 85 lúcidos años, se alza con dignidad y con envidiable coherencia narrativa y de contenido contra productos como la injustamente glorificada Nomadland (2020), ganadora del Oscar a la Mejor Película del Año. Lazos de familia y Nomadland tienen unas cuantas cosas en común: en lo anecdótico y en el hecho que desata la acción, los protagonistas son víctimas de la gran recesión que sigue al colapso financiero del 2008 y se ven obligados a tomar decisiones drásticas para no caer del otro lado del barranco económico, del cual no parece haber retorno. En Nomadland, Fern (Frances McDormand), opta por una solución “autónoma”, sumándose a las hordas de nómades modernos vehiculizados, versión romantizada de la vida en el camino, con la libertad de manejar horarios sin ataduras; en un pasaje memorable de la cinta, incluso, Fern, alternativamente trabajadora golondrina en la cosecha de la papa (tarea inhumana para una persona de su edad) o empleada de empaque de una planta de Amazon, elogia lo conveniente y la buena paga del sistema de “contratación” de la empresa del viajero espacial Jeff Bezos. En Lazos de familia, Rick, no muy convencido pero sin otra alternativa, se suma a un equipo de delivery multipropósito que no reconoce la relación trabajador-empleador, donde el trabajador es “dueño de una franquicia” de reparto que presta servicios a un implacable unicornio del e-commerce que aplasta sus derechos y cualquier posibilidad ya no de mejora mediante la perseverancia y el trabajo a destajo, sino también de su vida personal y familiar. Si bien es cierto que Loach repite temas y esquemas narrativos que terminan volviéndose previsibles, no es menos cierto que un film como Lazos de familia atrapa por la brutal honestidad de su mensaje y por la empatía que generan las magníficas actuaciones de todo el elenco (con lógicas reminiscencias del cinéma vérité). Si los grandes auteurs del cine en muchos casos cuentan una y otra vez las mismas historias con argumentos similares y temáticas idénticas, Loach, con Lazos de familia, ratifica que es un realizador de raza fiel a sus principios. No es poco, en un mundo arrasado por la globalización y proclive a sumarse a los nuevos paradigmas, sin consideración por el costo humano del avance tecnológico y creciente inequidad social.
Macbeth 2.0: epical show of strength Michael Fassbender’s turn as the evil thane becomes canonical performance When the plot of a fictional story is overwrought to the point of excessive familiarity, from literature to psychology and the more recent standpoint of cultural and gender studies, it becomes terrifyingly evident that a new stage production or film adaptation of a classic must necessarily provide new insights into an already overanalyzed work. Then, it is in this spirit — eager for new sensations and a feeling of expectancy — that audiences watch “the latest Macbeth,” as though it belonged, like opera, to a finite genre from which only new insights or unexpected flights of fancy can be tolerated. Certainly, variations and deflections are customarily viewed as heresy. The latest film adaptation, which we may refer to as Macbeth 2.0 for reasons of brevity and clarity, introduces deviations from the original as an ingenious manner of shedding light on storyline and character traits that may be overlooked in more literal readings. Filmed on location in Scotland, Macbeth 2.0 is as foggy and with as low visibility as the Scottish geography where the action takes place. As written for the screen, Macbeth 2.0 sticks to Shakespeare’s play in the way it has viewers understand that this is a fictional recreation partly based on a true historical account. Shakespeare’s text and his contemporary productions presumably did not have the narrative and its readings hinge around this fact. But now, once this accord between writer and viewers is established and agreed upon, Macbeth 2.0 unleashes an uncontrollable force with which Fate, Nature or the Gods endow Greek tragedy or Elizabethan drama. Directed by Justin Kurzel, Macbeth 2.0 is as ominous as can be expected, but the screenwriters and production designers shift the focus from the pivotal point of the content and form of The Three Witches’ prophecy (four, in this case) to the real and humane dilemma faced by an overambitious warrior intent on either giving in to temptation or sticking to a more analytical, sapient attitude. The moment the Macbeth in Macbeth 2.0 looks around for signs of danger and then up to the sky as though divine directions could be expected to rain down on him, you realize that there could be no better choice to fit in his shoes than actor Michael Fassbender, the embodiment of Macbeth’s temptation and presentiment. His face scarred and fatigued by so many wars under the banner of his King, Macbeth, as personified by Fassbender, is as truthfully devastating as could possibly be expected. Reflecting the Witches’ inexorable augury and forewarning, there’s no way Fassbender’s Macbeth can retreat back to the safe territory of naturalistic recreation, which would have also been extremely demanding for any actor. Fassbender has previously demonstrated a rare capacity to combine restrain and exultance in adventure stories, heist thrillers, epic dramas and, most especially, in a contemporary urban sexual odyssey (Shame, 2011), in which he draws an agonizing and fascinating portrait of human weakness. Fassbender’s Macbeth, in line with the screenwriters’ decision to shift the focus from ambition to the more mundane feeling of terror and fear of divine justice, is almost always sunk in apprehension and fear of the Gods. It may be rightly argued that Shakespeare makes it absolutely clear that it is not Macbeth’s own blinding ambition that drives his actions, but rather the aspirations of his ruthless, scheming wife. Most adaptations stick to this notion as a sacred dictum, but Macbeth 2.0, with the right combination of film language and setting and its lead’s riveting performance, creates an unexpected empathy with the murderous Macbeth. If not compassion or apprehension, it’s a shared tremor that bonds Fassbender’s Macbeth and the audience. Although, as in the masterly Shame, it’s Fassbender’s dazzling performance, to a large extent, that brings the pieces together and drives the hero/villain to his inescapable fate, Macbeth 2.0 features equally remarkable work by Paddy Considine (Banquo), David Thewlis (Duncan), and Sean Harris (MacDuff). Under director Kurzel’s deft guidance, major and minor characters in the story push the story forward in an epical show of strength and determination. But there always seems to be an obstacle to define an ensemble cast performance’s as “perfect.” In this case, it’s no less than French actress Marion Cotillard, whose sweet demeanour clashes with the implacable Lady Macbeth, regardless of adaptation or transposition. Cotillard, who spent long hours working on her English accent to produce a believable Lady Macbeth in the vocal sense, fails miserably, in spite of her sheer will, to convey Lady Macbeth’s ruthlessness and manipulative power over the weaker Macbeth. It’s not Cotillard’s fault, though. It’s simply that she was miscast to the point of putting at risk the credibility of the rest of the cast. But fret not. This Macbeth 2.0 is as full of resolution as to demonstrate, in an admirable display of competence, its unquestionable power to overcome any hurdle — even a guileless Lady Macbeth. Macbeth 2.0, along with Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, a spellbinding transposition of the Shakespearean text to feudal Japan, must surely reign supreme among the best Macbeths in film lore — and history.
Highly-anticipated film Baires is an ill-fated thriller with no thrills and glaring flaws POINTS: 3 Mateo (Benjamín Vicuña) and Trini (Sabrina Garciarena) are in love, pretty much like new couples usually are. They enjoy intimate moments of tenderness and long conversations, hot sex and cuddling at night. Though they are Argentine, they met and live in Spain and are now on vacation back in Buenos Aires. But on an ordinary night at a club, they are kidnapped and taken to a house where they meet Eric Leblanc (Carlos Belloso), a drug trafficker and El Mono (Rodrigo Guirao Díaz), one of his thugs. But the kidnappers don’t have robbery or extortion in mind for the young couple. Their plan is far more sinister. Eric wants Mateo to smuggle cocaine into Spain as an airline passenger. All he has to do is follow some instructions to ensure the success of a carefully-coordinated plan. But the human factor, be it out of fear or instinct of survival, will turn things upside down and Mateo won’t follow any order whatsoever. And that’s when the real consequences kick in. Written and directed by Marcelo Páez Cubells, Baires intends to be a suspense thriller, with some foot chases, tense situations, a couple of shootouts and a policeman (Germán Palacios) that in due time will help Mateo. It’s a genre film that wants to be dynamic and nerve-wracking and make viewers care for the fate of the protagonists. At the very end, it even tries its luck at an unexpected twist. And it fails in every regard. When instead of truly fleshed-out characters you have action figures lacking in personality, it’s impossible to care for any of them. Add to that the fact that all the performances range from mediocre to poor. Even Carlos Belloso, who’s usually a resourceful actor, fills in the shoes of a devalued stereotype. As for Vicuña, he’s not that bad actually but his character is barely credible, which is basically the same problem Palacios faces with his role. When it comes to Rodrigo Guirao Díaz, he just can’t act. But we already knew that. And there are of couple of very forgettable scenes with Juana Viale in another grossly underwritten role. Garciarena gets little screen time, even considering she shows up at the very farfetched ending. The movie’s string of flaws doesn’t stop here though: there’s a glaring lack of tension and suspense from beginning to end, implausible dialogue and even more implausible circumstances that the characters go through, poorly staged action scenes, lousy shootouts and no real drama anywhere. And don’t get me started on cinematography, editing, sound design, or art direction. Because if the script itself does not work at all, then not even the best mise-en-scene can compensate for it. And here, to top it all off, the mise-en-scene is far from remarkable. Production notes Baires (Argentina, 2015). Written and directed by Marcelo Páez-Cubells. With Benjamín Vicuña, Germán Palacios, Sabrina Garciarena, Carlos Belloso, Rodrigo Guirao Díaz, Juana Viale. Cinematography: Rodrigo Pulpeiro, Pablo Desanzo. Editing: César Custodio. Running time: 85 minutes.
Cronopios and Famas jump to big screen Julio Cortázar’s surrealist short-story collection Historias de Cronopios y de Famas may not be the easiest text to transpose to the big screen, for these imaginary/real beings are everywhere and are easily recognizable but at the same time they have this strange ability to go unnoticed, lost in a crowd of unremarkable people. Strange creatures, these Cronopios and Famas — they are ubiquitous and not easy to spot, let alone apprehend their true nature. Cronopios and Famas, you see, are equally elusive in spite of their opposite nature — while the former are malleable and adaptable to changing circumstances, the latter are more rigid and less capable of modifying their structured personalities. In spite of the literary notion known as intertextuality, according to which every text/work is in permanent dialogue with other works, there’s also this concept revolving around the autonomous nature and autonomous interpretation of any given piece of art. Not that these two trends are contradictory in terms of analysis, but sometimes the public at large forcibly leans toward one or the other. In the case of Cronopios and Famas, familiarity with Cortázar’s text does go a long way toward understanding — without overexplanation — what these fabulous creatures stand for in the writer’s universe. Cronopios and Famas are not enemies, nor are they incompatible. True, there is friction between Cronopios and Famas, but they would not be able to exist without each other. Once these facts are established, it’s not difficult to understand why and how Julio Ludueña’s animated feature Historias de Cronopios y de Famas works so smoothly as an animated feature. The secret lies in the director’s ability to seamlessly illustrate, through the work of outstanding visual artists, the comings and goings, doings and undoings, unsettling and comical most of them, of these creatures surreptitiously debunking culturally acquired notions of how things work in the “real” world. Director Ludueña turned to the representation of Cronopios and Famas envisaged by ten celebrated visual artists: Carlos Alonso, Daniel Santoro, Antonio Seguí, Patricio Bonta, Crist, Ricardo Espósito, Luis Felipe Noé, Magdalena Pagano, Luciana Sáez and Ana Tarsia. In true Cronopios and Famas fashion, their styles and techniques, oddly dissimilar on the surface, coalesce into a coherent whole in the hands of another equally gifted artist — filmmaker Ludueña, who resorted to freeware technology to make this animated fantasy come true. Ludueña’s selection of the Cronopios and Famas stories in his film is aesthetic, literary and ideological, as befits a writer like Cortázar who, at one point in his personal and professional life, openly embraced the leftwing governments of Latin America. As such, the film presents viewers with emotional, humorous and ironic stories about power and authority, and the way Cronopios and Famas come to terms with them. In most cases, power is represented as an excessive, sinister force and, in spite of their dissimilar view of the world’s conandrums, both Cronopios and Famas find themselves struggling to strike a balance between two opposing forces. From a strictly cinematic standpoint, each episode in Historias de Cronopios y de Famas, the film, is carefully, meticulously yet almost invisibly segued onto the next. Each story is autonomous in that it depicts a quest or a confrontation through the very end to the galloping beat of a score that encourages each side to make a bold move against an opposing force, only to have the same type of dispute start all over again in the next story. The unifying element that gives Historias de Cronopios y de Famas, the film, its undisputed cohesion, is the risible yet disquieting discordance between two sides, the strife being punctuated by a roaring thunderclap or a minimalist, barely audible sound of a leaf as it hits the ground. Exquisitely drawn and animated and set to a haunting music score — with Ezequiel Ludueña’s La milonga de los cronopios and La balada de los famas as most suitable centrepieces — this film version of Historias de Cronopios y de Famas hits the right note in that it conveys Cortázar’s ironic view of how things work beneath the surface in a comically absurd, politically polarized world ruled by forces beyond humankind’s control.
Santiago Loza’s La Paz: you used to smile that way BAFICI winner is a melancholy meditation on the past, the present, and the future Filmmaker-playwright-stage director Santiago Loza, who made his directorial début with the beautiful, heart-wrenching Extraño (2003) and went on to rise to international acclaim with Cuatro mujeres descalzas (2004), Ártico (2008), Rosa patria (2008), La invención de la carne (2009) and Los labios (2010) once again proves his fine mettle and gift for articulate, moving storytelling with the BAFICI winner La Paz (2013). To anyone familiar with Loza’s brief filmography (brief in quantitative terms, but long on raw emotional power and intensity), La Paz will come as no surprise as regards characters, subject matter and storyline development. Described by Loza himself as “transparent, with a certain amount of humour and tenderness,” La Paz, just like the searing La invención de la carne, might as well have been called Los ojos, because it’s the emotionless gaze of late twentysomething Liso (Lisandro Rodríguez) the camera focuses on as La Paz’s opening credits start to roll. Eyes, as convention will have it, are a window into a person’s soul, and Liso’s eyes are no exception: he has this vacant stare which, in a different context, could be mistaken for aloofness. As the camera zooms out to reveal Liso’s body, the fragility of his carnality is fully revealed for what it really is: a young man rendered infantile by his parents’ overprotection and, as a result, a person whose numbness shields him from the outer world. Loza’s La Paz — with a less cryptic title than his masterly Ártico, with a geographical reference which, apparently, is completely unrelated and unrelatable to the actual story — is both explicit and ellyptic, if such a contradiction is possible. Contemplative in nature, Liso’s story — out from psychiatric rehab, back home to rich parents who do care but find themselves unable to help the heavily medicated, mentally and spiritually lost son — is linear, true, but in an unpredictable fashion because it moves in short leaps formatted as episodes, each clearly marked with a self-explanatory intertitle. Starting with the peacefully descriptive El jardín (The garden), Loza draws the background against which the handful of characters in the film will move: Liso, his parents (Andrea Strenitz and Ricardo Félix), and Sonia, the family’s Bolivian maid. As stereotype will have it, Sonia, like most people from the altiplano immense plateau, is not given to words, but whenever she does speak her words, uttered in a low voice and with a harmonious cadence, she appeases whoever cares to listen. Liso does listen. Furthermore, he finds comfort and solace in Sonia’s wisdom, in her soothing words, in Sonia’s company to his medicated solitude. The next episode (whimsically “split,” because there is a seamless continuum and no sense of autonomy in each story), is stringently titled La moto (The motorcycle). It has a circular structure which, far-fetched as it may sound, brings to mind Korean master filmmaker Tsai Ming-lian’s terrifyingly beautiful He Liu (The River, 1997). While in The River the angst-filled, working class teen drifter Xiao-kang scooted around the desolate streets of a purposefully marginal Seoul, in La Paz it is Liso who, like a spoiled child, receives a motorcycle as some sort of comeback present from his parents and soon finds himself attached to the motor vehicle as though it were the nexus (the only one) between his painfully disconnected soul and the few people he bonds with. It’s a beautiful ride, overall. Once again, it’s Sonia’s tranquil approach that slows down the breakneck speed at which a motorcycle normally moves. “We’ll go slow, at 50 kms per hour,” Liso explains, inviting her to climb back on board for a short ride. Sonia agrees upon the condition that they make it 25 kms per hour. In this sense, La moto condenses one of La Paz’s key motifs: the tranquility of a smooth ride, the peace of mind needed to strike a balance in lives otherwise lived in speedy traffic. La Paz, in keeping with the extremely simple semantic analogy with its title, moves at the pace of Liso’s slow recovery and in synch with his psychological and emotional needs. Lisandro Rodríguez’s performance as the emotionally scarred Liso is fittingly absent, reflecting his character’s sense of loss, his distress, the almost religious devotion with which he unpacks, out of a tattered cardboard box, the toys he used to play with as a child, putting them away like the precious past they stand for. There is anguish in Liso’s loss, and there is corporeal and verbal comfort in the words softly spoken by Sonia. Though never lost in reverie, Sonia lives the present for what it is: an instance in the brevity of life. It’s not that, secretly, Sonia longs for her loved Bolivia. Her forced migration to Argentina for economic reasons is viewed as inevitable but reversible with the passing of time and patience. As played with the right acumen by Fidelia Batallanos Michel, Sonia is about Liso’s only tangible link with reality and someone to fall back on when his agony and misery become unbearable. Batallanos Michel’s Sonia has been drawn into the script as an intermittent yet permanent force, invisible but palpably strong at the same time. Sonia, the character she plays with comforting relief, is most likely a reflection of her own true-life persona, so vivid is Sonia’s connection with life. Liso’s mother (Andrea Strenitz) could have been easily drawn as a stereotype — an upper class BA lady with a lean, tan, young girl’s body and a demeanour to match. Loza, however, intelligently turns her into a loving mother who really cares for her only child’s suffering, to the extent of protecting him in a childish, maternal manner more appropriate for the relationship between a young mother and her child. Perhaps the only cliched character in La Paz is Liso’s father (Ricardo Félix), who has the boy learn how to shoot a gun instead of encouraging the healthier side of his strange proclivity to disattach himself from society, with the sole exception of his mother, his grandmother (Beatriz Bernabé), and Sonia, the family maid. Overflowing with the sadness of loss, Loza’s La Paz oozes the vital intensity and melancholy of lives lived without great expectations, only with a glimmer of hope for a brighter tomorrow, with the secret knowledge that happiness and fulfillment lie a few metres ahead, regardless of the distance between what you call home out of never quite raisonné habit, and the geographically removed place where you find true solace and peace. La Paz, in a few words.
Luck of My Life Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia’s black comedy La chispa de la vida (2011) is context-dependent (heavily so) and situation-driven rather than a study in human character and individual traits. Set against the background of the socioeconomic crisis hitting Spain and Europe, La chispa de la vida is another step-by-step guide on how to overcome (and get caught in the grip of) unexpected events. Although perfectly consistent with De la Iglesia’s trademark humorously dark take on solemn matters, La chispa de la vida, as said before, cannot be viewed in isolation, out of context, as it is built upon the economic crisis and joblessness sweeping Spain’s workforce. What De la Iglesia’s dark comedy does, perhaps, is provide soulful empathy with the victims of a crackup that’s more financial than economic, as the Occupy Wall Street and the indignados movements seek to prove. Roberto Gómez (José Mota) is an out-of-work publicist who has been on the dole for two years. To better picture the situation, Argentine audiences ought, perhaps, to look back to 2001 and 2002, when an economic crisis of unprecedented proportion hit the country with no hope of fast recovery or amelioration. Just like Pablo in Andrés Paternostro comedy La boleta, Roberto hops from job interview to job interview, CV in hand, coming home every night empty-handed and faking high spirits before wife and kids. In “As luck would have it” (the English-language release title of La chispa de la vida), Roberto suffers an absurd accident at the site of a recently discovered and restored Roman circus. After a teeth-grinding stunt fighting for his life, Roberto lands in the circus arena, but he is not home and dry, not exactly. Roberto lands on his back in a piece, but an iron rod is stuck in his head. As the culture authorities find themselves unable to inaugurate the restored Roman circus (which would have served their political plans to perfection), Roberto engineers a scheme to make the best out of his life-threatening situation. Just like any good publicist would do, Roberto engages the services of an agent to strike a lucrative deal with a TV network for a live broadcast of his crucifixion and hislast words before he goes to Heaven. Roberto’s fatal head wound has caught the world’s attention, just like the 33 trapped Chilean miners had a couple of years back. As Roberto’s agent wisely and cruelly cracks, the only problem with the Chilean miners’ case (for a profit-making opportunity, that is) is that they eventually came out alive. Roberto (fabulously performed by José Mota) is well aware that opportunity will not knock on his door twice, and that this is his one and only chance to secure financial protection for his wife (Salma Hayek) and their children, soon to go to college. The ensuing media circus surrounding Roberto’s plight provides De la Iglesia with the kind of material he expertly translates into mordant irony and ethical dilemma. For De la Iglesia’s hordes of staunch fans, La chispa de la vida will prove intelligent, sardonic entertainment, but non advocates of his backbiting, thought-provoking humour will probably be left wanting for a more original and less moralizing finale.
Sofia Coppola takes on celebrity-obsessed teens You’d be dead wrong if you thought that Sofia Coppola’s latest movie — the much-publicized screen adaptation of a Vanity Fair article based on real-life events — marks a new departure from her chameleonic transformations as a filmmaker. It may be argued that there’s at least one unifying element in some of her previous films (Lost in Translation, 2003; Somewhere, 2010): the loss of identity and sense of belonging and the irrepressible need to find it back. The Bling Ring too deals with a group of alienated people, but taken to pathological extremes. The film, based on the appropriately titled Vanity Fair article The Suspects Wore Louboutins, tries hard to expose and analyze a group of teens from an affluent Los Angeles neighbourhood who are obsessed with fame and glamour, so much so that they are pathologically driven to break into the homes of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars and take home a bounty with them. Running on empty lives, what these drifters have in common — apart from attending an alternative middle school for dropouts — is their lack of positive role models and the incapacity to reinvent themselves, contrary to the wishes of their dim-witted parents, who can see no farther than the cover of a glossy fashion/gossip magazine. When the new boy in school, Marc (Israel Broussard) finds himself unexpectedly popular thanks to a party invitation from Rebecca (Katie Chang), he becomes trapped — perhaps willingly so — into a gang led by the vicious Rebecca and her entourage of adolescent boys and girls dreaming, one day, of leading a life full of glamour and glitz, easy money, endless opportunities. What they do have at hand, for the time being, is the chance to burglarize the homes of the filthy rich and famous and steal what they believe is, or ought to be, rightly theirs: designer clothes, shoes and bags, authentic jewellery, and loads of cash. Using the Internet (specifically, the TMZ, Google Maps and celebrityaddressaerial.com web sites), they find out when famous, potential targets will be out, in many cases leaving the doors to their homes unlocked, relying on surveillance cameras and security guards. Although based on a fascinating true story that made headlines in gossip magazines, Coppola’s The Bling Ring is slow, too slow kicking in, so much so that the first 1/3 of the movie resembles a sluggish novel in which the characters are presented in a cut and dry manner, with no undertones, no shades of grey. Like a fashion show, in short. It is only when the teens’ testimonies are interspersed in the main narrative that The Bling Ring starts to take shape and capture viewers’ attention, for these are the only instances in which you see their real selves and not the shiny, polished surfaces they present to the world. Unlike a documentary or a faux documentaire, the footage is revealing and never boring. Indeed, these snippets run the precise length, then fade to black and jump cut to the narrative of the actual turn of events. While it is easy to see why Coppola was so mesmerized and thrilled as to develop a script detailing the teens’ “adventures” and explore the social malaise behind it, her film is a succinct account of the youngsters’ exploits and not much more, save for the occasional insight into the boredom and lethargy of rich kids who choose to rob the “rich pigs,” as they scribble on a starlet’s boudoir after ransacking her fabulous designer clothes and jewels. In true cinéma verité and Method style, before the start of main photography, Ms. Coppola reportedly got the cast to fake-burgle a house to see what mistakes her actors would make. The problem with The Bling Ring, however, does not lie in the authenticity of the burglaries, nor in the teen robbers’ anxiety and fear of being caught, for this is what gets them high on an adrenaline rush. The trouble with the film is that Ms. Coppola most certainly grasped the corruption of the social fabric of the upper crust of society, but her perception is not rightly reflected in the movie. When Nicki, one of the ring leaders, is caught on camera pretending to fence off the paparazzi covering her arrest, The Bling Ring seems to be ironically telling us that she eventually achieved her goal — her own fifteen minutes of fame, even if for the wrong reasons. The joke, however, falls flat and fails to make the point that it is us, viewers, as a consummerist, voyeuristic society, that feed the vultures and The Fame Monsters.
This could be Blanchett doing Blanche A demigod’s fall from grace makes for meaty subject for writers, storytellers, playwrights — for any artist with a penchant for theatricals and the classic grandeur of classic tragedies. Woody Allen’s latest foray Blue Jasmine is a brilliant example of this kind of periplus, a dangerous journey he turns into an enjoyable ride in spite of the film’s core theme. SUBJECT. Jasmine, one of New York’s most sought after socialites, has until recently lived a glossy-magazine kind of perfect life: billions to spend on every imaginable luxury, a handsome husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin) who happens to be an incredibly rich stock market entrepreneur, and a college student kid who goes from loser to popular after daddy gives a lecture at an auditorium packed with undergraduates pathologically anxious to wring out the secret to financial success. Behind his immaculate splendour, though, Hal has been running some sort of resurrected Ponzi scheme, taking away from the rich with the promise to make them even richer, and stealing from the poor like only a small-time crook would. After the financial bubble bursts, Jasmine (her real name or one she has taken on purely for social purposes) finds herself naturally talking to herself on a plane bound for San Francisco, where her estranged sister Ginger lives in lower middle-class discomfort. But Blue Jasmine, starring the ever-mesmerizing Cate Blanchett as a rich, glamorous woman who brings financial disaster and emotional ruin upon herself, is not just a simple account of how ill-gotten riches and honours may distance down-to-earth folk away from reality. Blue Jasmine, impeccably written and choreographed by Mr. Allen, is a veritable tour de force thanks to the impressive performance of Ms. Blanchett and the ensemble cast. Blue Jasmine, if you’ll pardon the comparison, heavily references and pays tribute to Elia Kazan’s adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. There is, indeed, more than just one plotpoint or two in common between Blue Jasmine and Streecar... The summation of a similar sequence of events and the manner Mr. Allen retells an operatic mad scene as a seamless stream-of-consciousness style events that give the film an overall feeling of familiarity with the lead characters and their tribulations. Jasmine, of course, is Allen’s answer to Williams’ deranged Blanche, much in the same manner that Jasmine’s sister Ginger (the cutesy Sally Hawkins, in a delightfully understated performance) mirrors the docile Stella, who strives to maintain the delicate balance at the Kowalski household. Stanley’s counterpart (Chili) is most adequately sketched as a caricature by Bobby Cannavale, a bundle of muscles who likes to play brute but weeps like a baby at the slightest instance of emotional wound. Finally, Williams’ Mitch, the sweet prince charming intended as Blanche’s last hope for freedom and happiness, becomes a handsome, endearing (and rich) entrepreneur ready to launch his political career by the side of a socially acceptable wife. At first sight, this is as far as parallelism goes here, at least as regards characterization. If, artificially and conceitedly, the definition of “characterization” is extended to presentation and representation of events, then there’s a plethora of visual cues that point to Streetcar’s minimalist composition. Ginger’s modest lodgings, with a wooden partition between living room and bedroom, between half-concealed public truth and private shame, closely resembles the Kowalski’s humble home. The manner Jasmine comes a-knockin’ on her estranged sister’s home is another close reminder of how Williams handled the all-too-human need to conceal ignominy and pass it off as something pitiably resembling honour. But curtains and drapes are easily torn to pieces, and partitions brought down and broken into pieces when least expected. THEME. The normative goes that this should be as brief and succinct as possible, which could be easily confused with a moral or truth to be learned from a story or event. Blue Jasmine’s theme cannot be easily condensed into one sentence or two. Its storyline could, but trying to define its theme would be reductionist, to say the least. When somebody’s misfortune is structured as a morality tale, what you get is a biblical compendium of all the evils that fall upon unrepentant sinners. When a gifted storyteller like Mr. Allen tackles a story about sinful rise and deserved downfall, what you get is either a darkly prophetic tale like his own Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989), or a sweetly melancholy meditation on the logic of human destiny, like Annie Hall (1977) or Manhattan (1979). CONCLUSION. Although the similarities between Streetcar... and Blue Jasmine are not difficult to spot, this is not a nuisance, for Mr. Allen’s deft hand turns replica into moving tribute, staging Blue Jasmine as an original piece of work that invites reflection and reformulation of the same old preoccupations endured by humankind. The way Blue Jasmine’s story is punctuated and invisibly segued despite its jump-cut style of editing, you’d think there is no end to Mr. Allen’s wizardry, for he has chosen a comedic tone for what is rightly considered a cataclysmic misfortune and turn of events. His choice of female lead is further proof of his casting skill, for the wondrous Ms. Blanchett goes with amazing ease from ruthless, aloof detachment when she’s on top of the world, to false pretense and delusion of grandeur when her make-believe world of endless riches comes tumbling down. Think Gena Rowlands in John Cassavettes’ A Woman Under the Influence and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what Ms. Blanchett is capable of achieving: nothing short of stunning perfection.
Almodóvar gets two thumbs down Pedro Almodóvar’s latest opus asks vexing question: where’s the cockpit? When all is said and done, his new movie I’m So Excited is anything but thrilling, a precarious throwback to 1980s slapstick farce. Over thirty years have elapsed since Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar made his commercial breakthrough with Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980), his hard-to-beat testimony and oral-visual riff on Madrid’s post-punk era and its decadent debauchery after four decades of iron-fist régime. When Almodóvar’s first indie efforts traversed the Atlantic and showed in BA at the Centro Cultural Iberoamericano on Florida Street, cinephiles packed the small auditorium because it was the one and only chance to watch the work of the latest enfant térrible to emerge from Spain after... Luis Buñuel? Although Almodóvar’s brand of pop artifacts were quite distant from the seemingly august (utterly cynical, in fact) Buñuel of El ángel exterminador (1962), Belle de jour (1967), or Tristana (1970), the young Almodóvar, still commercially unreleased in Argentina, had forged an intriguing, exciting reputation as the one director who could claim the right to be labelled cinema’s ultra-new provocateur. Pepi, Luci, Bom... and Entre tinieblas (1983), minor blemishes and all, blew fresh air into an otherwise stagnant film scene. After all, democracy had been restored in Argentina almost at the same time as Almodóvar’s disturbing, outrageous and incensing type of cinema emerged in Spain. Almodóvar possessed the right type of bombastic narrative and politically-charged content Argentines were so much in need of. As Almodóvar continued his unstoppable ascent to film stardom, crowned by the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (Todo sobre mi madre, 1999), audiences rightly came to expect something uniquely Almodovarian with every new outing, and every time the director delivered thanks to his unflailing capacity for reinvention. Starting with the movie poster itself — a delicious pop confectionery item — Almodóvar’s new film Los amantes pasajeros (I’m So Excited, 2013) harks back, in principle, to the Pepi... provocative comedy days and promises a wealth of intoxicating fun like only Almodóvar is able to serve fresh. Los amantes pasajeros, however, makes good on none of these promises, rehashing old, formulaic gags to no effect and instilling the movie with a stale flavour, as if Almodovariana had suddenly gone sour. On a strictly semantic basis, Los amantes pasajeros is a reference to the two heads in the noun phrase: the amantes (lovers) alludes to brief, secretive sexual encounters; and pasajeros (passengers) stands for travellers but is also an adjective applicable to everything fleeting and short-lived in life. While Almodóvar’s previous opus, La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011) divided audiences and critics who either loved it unconditionally or hated it viscerally for its ludicrous take on the dark side of human nature, Los amantes pasajeros looks, at first, like a welcome return to side-splitting spoof with multiple layers of sociopolitical undertone. Los amantes pasajeros is set on a plane bound for Mexico City, and propelling the action forward is a mechanical failure that forces an emergency landing — but there is no runway available near La Mancha, and the pilots and crew stage a simulacrum of normalcy. The economy class passengers are all sedated into profound sleep, and business flyers are treated to a farcical festival with pranks by the flight attendants: top that with alcohol, furious sex encounters and drugs, and the combination proves explosive. Whether in the cockpit or any of the two passenger compartments, it is easy to read, in this Almodóvar riff, that the aircraft stands, metaphorically, for the whole of a society immersed in a profound crisis, and that crawling your way into the wrong compartment is tantamount to murder... or the time of your life. While Almodóvar is perfectly capable of turning a trite story into delicious, insightful social commentary, this is not the case with the flawed and disappointing Los amantes pasajeros. As is the case in factory assembly lines, Los amantes pasajeros too seems to have been built mechanically, laying the groundwork and setting the stage for what’s to come. Which, by the way, is the one and only scene with Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz as two goofy airport workers. It’s the crisis, then, which has, in real life, affected the financial side of Almodóvar’s new movie — both Banderas and Cruz, as the true international stars they have become, are way too expensive for a small-budget romp. In keeping with the title, Los amantes pasajeros marks Banderas’ and Cruz’s seventh and fifth collaboration, respectively, with Almodóvar, in ensemble cast or as leading man or lady. This time, however, Almodóvar has to make do — belittling as the comment may sound — with Javier Cámara, Carlos Areces, Lola Dueñas, Cecilia Roth, Paz Vega and others. True, at some point Javier Cámara (Hable con ella, La mala educación) and Cecilia Roth (Todo sobre mi madre) played the leads in Almodóvar’s biggest draws, but Los amantes pasajeros finds them trapped in the suffocating ambience of a plane bound for nowhere and in disposable roles that repeat, to the point of fastidiousness, the type of archetypal characters lesser actors forcibly play. Cámara plays Joserra, a gay flight attendant (all three flight attendants are, isn’t this another clichéd assumption?) who joins the ranks of alcohol-fuelled pranksters some goofie farcical movies brim with. Roth, otherwise brilliant (like in her moving turn as the mother who suffers an irreparable loss in the masterful Todo sobre mi madre) can get no more stupid and bitchy as Norma Boss, an unscrupulous, high-flying madame. When it comes to topicality and temporality, Los amantes pasajeros may be related not only to Spain’s socioeconomic crisis, but also to a technology-obsessed world in which anyone may be the subject of a WikiLeaks-type security-hole exposé prompted by “cybercriminals” like Edward Snowden. In Los amantes pasajeros, indeed, all hell breaks loose when, due to a technological glitch, everyone on the plane learns that the aircraft is flying in circles, that no runway is available, that they — factically and metaphorically — are going nowhere. Just like Los amantes pasajeros, the movie, if you’ll pardon the analogy.
To Catch a Thief A conman being outconned and outsmarted by a seemingly innocent and innocuous beautiful girl? If the premise sounds conventional, it’s because it belongs to a genre with semi-canonical rules: a caper, technically described as “an illegal plot or enterprise, especially one involving theft.” The tag fits very well the new heist-romcom Vino para robar, Ariel Winograd’s new movie after the hilarious wedding party comedy Mi primera boda (2011). In the same manner that Mi primera boda stuck to the conventions of a genre best defined as choral pranksters’ movie, Vino para robar has all the makings of Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief (1955), which it heavily references and pays due tribute to. On the local front, Vino para robar brings to mind Fabián Bielinsky’s Nueve reinas (Nine Queens, 2000), in which two conmen try to rip off a stamp collector but, instead, end up attempting to double cross themselves. In true heist comedy style, Vino para robar focuses on a couple of professional swindlers (Sebastián, Daniel Hendler; and Natalia, Valeria Bertuccelli) who set their eyes on the same item: an ancient Aztec mask worth millions of dollars. Sebastián is the kind of professional conman who, in spite of his good looks and elegance, can go unnoticed in the most unlikely situations. True, every now and then he needs a disguise and some props to pass himself off as something he is not, but it is his acting skill that allows him to cheat seasoned crooks like himself. His rival-turned-accomplice Natalia is an impersonation master capable of drawing attention away from her real intentions and interests, normally related to valuable goodies and the unsurmountable chances of getting her hands on them. The harder the better, seems to be her motto. Both Hendler and Bertuccelli have an impressive acting range, and Vino para robar seems to have been written with them in mind. In previous films, Hendler had to avoid typecasting as a stuttering late teen to progress into mature roles, the most emblematic of them being his Luciano Gauna role in Gabriel Medina’s friendship-in-a-collision-course dramedy Los paranoicos (2008). Bertuccelli, for her part, is equally at home in drama and comedy, and although Natalia is her first role as a loveable swindler, in Vino para robar she pushes the boundaries of typecasting to create a new, fresh version of this 1950s-style classic character. Once the scene is set (Sebastián and Natalia meeting for the first time and coming to realize that they’d better work as a team) Vino para robar moves at breakneck speed, shifting the action from a cosmopolitan city like Buenos Aires to the calm, rich but never opulent Mendoza City. Known for its spectacular landscapes and first-rate vineyards, Mendoza is the next destination in the couple of swindlers’ mission to get hold of a rare bottle of wine sought after by a rich collector. As Sebastián and Natalia make their way to the vineyard where the precious bottle is kept in store, Vino para robar references, but never steals from, To Catch a Thief and other 1950s action-romance romps. Further allusions: Sebastián drives a sports car reminiscent of a James Bond adventure, and Natalia occupies the passenger seat drifting off to some long gone by day when she was not a thief but just a girl willing to keep her family estate from rapacious buyers. Unknown to Sebastián, this is Natalia’s ultimate goal: not a priceless antique or fortune, but rather the more unselfish purpose of preventing her father from going out of business. If the premise behind Vino para robar sounds conventional to the point of triteness, it’s because it is, unashamedly, enjoyably so. Director Winograd does a fine job out of this non-stop ride, even if there are some loopholes in the script, which is not as neat and tight as that of Mi primera boda. Although pinpointing these flaws is, if not mission impossible, something close to it, truth is Vino para robar is very good in almost every department, but the action stalls at times because the scenes are not that well segued together. Engaging and beautifully photographed, with splendid performances by the leads and the ensemble cast, Vino para robar is close, very close to the kind of product Winograd surely had in mind when choosing the narrative device, the gorgeous visuals and the intense action scenes typical of nerve-shattering action movies. Minor flaws and all, Vino para robar (a pun on words viewers decipher only after the action gives them some respite) moves at an appropriately fast pace and provides 100 minutes of action and romance, two ingredients without which capers do not function properly.