Los de arriba y los de abajo En términos generales (muy amplios, en realidad), Topos, el debut en el largometraje de Emiliano Romero, entraría en la categoría de Cine Fantástico. Si nos atenemos a los premisas básicas del género (tanto en literatura como en otros lenguajes expresivos), una obra es “fantástica” si los elementos de horror o sobrenaturales tienen un fuerte anclaje en la realidad. Es decir, la intención es lograr que los lectores/espectadores tengan la sobrecogedora, poco tranquilizadora sensación de que los hechos narrados bien podrían ser reales o plausibles. Topos, analizada muy por arriba, pertenece al género fantástico pero también se sumerge en las pantanosas aguas del surrealismo con un fuerte contenido social. En Topos -al igual que en la magistral Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001)- hay un arriba y hay un abajo. Abajo, en medio de impenetrables túneles, vive una sociedad (secreta, se supone) de “topos”, mientras que arriba funciona una academia de danza. La metáfora, de tan clara, se vuelve nimia, y no ofrece al espectador ninguna, absolutamente ninguna chance de deshilvanar nada, contrariamente a lo que sucede en una buena fábula sobre el retorno de alguien que retoma sus pasos madeja en mano. En Topos no hay ni siquiera un piolín. No hace falta. Eso sí, no se puede acusar al guionista-director Emiliano Romero de caer en la sempiterna trampa de cierto cine argentino en el cual se explica lo más obvio con meticulosa atención. En Topos la transparencia del mensaje la brindan, entre otros elementos, el excelente trabajo de diseño artístico, decorados, iluminación y maquillaje. La ruptura del status quo de las dos sociedades de Topos se produce cuando el hijo del líder de los de abajo aspira a subir al arriba, para estudiar en la escuela de danzas. La oposición paterna -por filiación y por liderazgo- se hace sentir con un estruendo, y nuevamente la metáfora deja de ser metáfora para convertirse en obvia representación. ¿Los de abajo, los marginados en las madrigueras, deben bailar y bailar para lograr la tan ansiada movilidad social? Cualquier parecido con la realidad mediática actual es mera coincidencia. De todos modos, a pesar de un buen guión con sólo algunos baches narrativos, Topos no puede ser tildada de “mala”, ni siquiera de “regular”. Es un producto extraño, ecléctico (confuso, tal vez), casi inclasificable. En medio de este collage de esquemas narrativos y estéticas de representación, se destaca la magnífica labor de Lautaro Delgado, irreconocible bajo una capa de maquillaje que recuerda al de Natalie Portman en El Cisne Negro de Darren Aronofsky (2010).
It isn’t everybody who has a really good plan Had it been a Patricia Highsmith mystery — obviously, René Clément’s 1960 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, entitled Plein Soleil / Purple Noon in its film version — the new Argentine/ Spanish/ German co-production Todos tenemos un plan would have stood a chance of cutting through the weeds and reeds so abundant in the swampy waters of the Delta del Tigre, where most of the action takes place. It being an opera prima scripted by the director herself (Ana Piterbarg), Todos tenemos un plan, which ought to play heavily on the side of duplicity games, falls short of the mark and barely manages to meet the requirements of a moody, noirish thriller. Originality is not what director/screenwriter Piterbarg had in mind when developing her own plan — her movie’s plotline boils down to the used and abused classical game of opposites embodied by a pair of twins with highly dissimilar lifestyles and intentions. There is no much variation either in the way the story develops, unfolding as an old-fashioned intrigue involving identity theft and a carefully laid out plan gone awry. But one of the scattered favourable points in Piterbarg’s Todos tenemos un plan is that none of the siblings is strictly good or bad. One of the twins, the more respectable one, is Agustín, a prestigious pediatrician with a successful and professionally rewarding practice, and married to the beautiful and well-grounded Claudia (Soledad Villamil). Of the two, it’s Claudia who throws things off balance when she convinces the reluctant Agustín to start the complex process of child adoption. With only a few bureaucratic procedures to complete before they can become a happy family, the good doctor suffers a panic attack and turns tables on Claudia. Dr. Agustín has decided he does not want to, even dreads the thought of parenting a child. Claudia, strong-willed and full of determination like any would-be mother — biological or not — decides to carry on with her own plan. If adoption means the end of her marriage, so be it — she’ll bring up the baby on her own, sell the apartment and make a new start as a single mother. Agustín frets and locks himself up in his study, refusing to go out for days on end in solitary, self-imposed confinement. Unable to talk her husband out of abandoning his silly plan, Claudia goes away on a short business trip, her mind set on starting anew after her return. Agustín has no plan of his own, but opportunity comes a-callin’ when Pedro, his estranged twin brother, shows up at his door, the human and visual opposite of Agustín’s upper middle class standing. Pedro has had it rough for the last years, living in a solitary island in the Delta del Tigre, committing petty theft, walking in and out of jail, unable to strike a balance and surrounding himself with bad company, such as Adrián (Daniel Fanego). A domestic accident during Pedro’s stay at his brother’s provides Agustín with the kind of identity-swap opportunity that strikes but once in a lifetime — yes, even in the case of twins. The catch: running away from scary parental duty and an apathetic domestic life will not be without consequence. If the contention that everyone would like to cast the dice one more time holds true, Todos tenemos un plan ought to make for the ideal kind of getaway story with a morality twist almost everyone could readily identify with. As it stands, Todos tenemos un plan is neither a botched job nor an accomplished task. Standing in between character study and crime story with a social critique of an amoral society, Todos tenemos un plan, switching gears as it goes along its 120-minute runtime, veers off its stated premise and makes you wish you had planned it all better, with less hate, with more attention to detail and consequence. Mortensen, light years away from his sterling performances in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), plays it as it lays, like growing a beard and putting on his dead brother’s soiled garments, as though Agustín’s surgeon hands could be easily traded in for the rough, rugged hands of a man performing hard manual labour in the Delta. Actress Sofía Gala Castiglione, who plays tough girl Rosa (Agustín’s new-found love interest) clearly stands to benefit from her appalling acting record with the likes of Eliseo Subiela (El resultado del amor, 2007) and Diego Rafecas (Rodney, 2008; Paco, 2009). Her roles in those three films were so ridiculous that her turn in Todos tenemos un plan, however unremarkable, comes across as a nice surprise, and hers eventually becomes the one and only character in the film with a neatly laid out plan for herself.
Let there be pigs between them Jews and Palestinians are confronted in absurd situations in Le cochon de Gaza Think Middle East and the words uprising, armed conflict, or at least political tension come to mind. Is it possible or is it just a utopian dream to pick up a newspaper and find that there’s peace instead of conflagration, or to watch the news on TV and come across smiling faces instead of stern talking heads spilling out the day’s bad news? Common sense would say it’s just an impossible dream. French director Sylvain Estibal may have thought otherwise when he first devised and then wrote a film script deeply rooted in reality — in the disputed Gaza Strip. He took at a good look at the situation there and maybe he decided it was meaty material for a comedy. Estibal made all of this and much, much more, letting his imagination fly (literally) to script and direct an absurdly hilarious and entertaining film like Le cochon de Gaza (When Pigs Have Wings). Across the divide between Jews and Palestinians there are, apparently, hordes of reasons (on each side) to hate and blame one another for the never-ending unrest in the region, for the deadly bombings and armed attacks are deeply and inextricably ingrained in their daily lives. Delusional as his idea may have seemed at first, Estibal came up with this idea of concentrating his story on the one thing that unites Jews and Palestinians: their abhorrence of pigs as impure creatures. Both religions prohibit and punish not only the digestion but just mere contact with swine. Pigs, then, are one of the few (or many) things both peoples have in common. And a pig (an endearing one) is at the centre of an utterly comic dispute between Jews and Palestinians in Le cochon de Gaza. It’s highly unlikely but not impossible: after a storm cleans out the fishing area on the Palestine side, an impoverished fisherman, Jafaar (Sasson Gabai), nets only a couple of small fish not worth looking at. Back home, his wife, Fatima (Baya Belal), waits for a big catch — to put on the table and to help pay off their mounting debts. Jafaar is on the brink of humiliation. The following day is exactly like the day before: no fish on his net, but a heavy load not easy to identify: a pig. The rationale in the film goes that the pig may have slipped from a Vietnamese cargo ship or fishing vessel and miraculously survived the fall, only to be caught in Jafaar’s net. If a biblical twist is needed for this unthinkable event, Jafaar is not able to find it. He only knows that religion forbids contact with the animal, preventing him from touching it and throwing it back to the sea. Determined to get rid of the unsightly beast, Jafaar tries at first to sell it (secretly) for a profit, but there are no takers on either side of the Gaza strip. Man meets pig, tries to hide it, must go through a series of misadventures to conceal the fact that he’s in possession of a devilishly impure beast. This is the basic storyline of Estibal’s Le cochon de Gaza, a most ingenuous movie that defies the limits of credibility by interspersing feasible occurrences with completely unrealistic events. Most performers agree that comedy is much, much harder than drama. Comedians who face an unpredictable audience know this very well: the same trick or joke may work wonders with some, and the next day the same prank may prove utterly disappointing. Estibal’s Le Cochon de Gaza is unlikely to go the fate of staged productions. Although no such thing as infallibility exists, Le cochon de Gaza is so seamlessly put together and acted against such a tragic background as the Gaza strip that it becomes a most suitable territory for humour. The same streak of imagination may have been running through the minds of Estibal and other filmmakers, such as Argentina’s Alejandro Borensztein, who last year pulled one off (an extraordinary one, at that) with that small gem of a comedy titled Un cuento chino. As a mere reminder, the action in Un Cuento chino is set off by the completely unexpected and improbable event of a cow falling off a passing plane and landing on a boat where a couple of Chinese lovers are making out. Action in Le cochon de Gaza too moves forward after an implausible event, but suspension of disbelief is all it takes to enjoy this delicious comedy about a man who, unknown to him, exposes the absurd stance of both sides in the conflict between the Jewish and the Palestine. A detestable, ignominious, unruly beast like a cochon cannot be easily persuaded to walk off. If you do succeed, though, where’s the animal going to step on? On forbidden territory as well. Kick the ball to the other side, and it’ll come bouncing back, the acid humour in Le cochon de Gaza seems to be telling us. Although the humour in Le cochon... may at first seem full of commonplaces, it’s the way Estibal stitches the narrative that gives the whole a good amount of porcine effectiveness. The struggle for power and territorial expansion are always there, but when a cochon steps in among horrified Jews and Palestinians you cannot but laugh your heart out. It’s not that a pig is intrinsically comic, it’s us humans who are comically absurd in our fundamentalist view of unquestionable dogmas. Call it faith, call it religious devotion, but when things get out of hand there’s not much you can do but laugh. And if you happen to be an animal rights activist, fret not: Le cochon de Gaza does not mistreat the animal in question in any way, nor does it poke fun at or question its eating and hygiene habits. Once again, it’s us humans who are ridiculed in this extremely funny (and at times thought-provoking) Cochon de Gaza.
The Mill and the Cross: the splash, the forsaken cry Lech. J. Majewski’s tableau is a pious meditation on Christianity’s and humanity’s Passion Masterly witnessing the process of construction of Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel’s The Procession to Calvary (1564), Polish director Lech. J. Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross is a stunningly beautiful if lacerating canvas portraying both Christ’s crucifixion...
Black Doh jumps out to sea... and raps Humankind goes to war mostly for economic reasons. The ravages of war cause migration waves to more welcoming and safer territories. Filmmaker Rubén Plataneo couldn’t shake this thought off his head after his immigrant grandparents gave him a detailed account of the reasons that pushed them to seek a better future crossing the Atlantic to start from scratch. More often than not, the children and descendants of immigrants hear about this trip and give no second thought to it. But Plataneo’s case was different — his grandparents’ account was so vivid, so meticulously detailed and painful, that he felt the irrepressible compulsion to keep a record, even if metaphorical, of this great trip. That record, or log, to use a maritime term that fits the context, materialized in his feature film début El gran río, premiering today in BA at the Gaumont, Arte Cinema and Cosmos movie theatres. The story of a young man’s journey from Europe across the Atlantic to Argentina is just one instance of a displacement experience. It was not Plataneo’s intention to recreate on screen that feat of a journey. Rather, he wanted to paint a larger picture. But it was not through a monumental migration that he chronicled his grandparents’ voyage. It was back to square one, that is, to an individual account — a contemporary one — when he made the acquaintance, then the friendship, of David Bangoura, a.k.a. Black Doh, an immigrant from Guinea who landed on the port of San Lorenzo, near Rosario, after travelling as a stowaway on a Vietnamese cargo ship. It was not war, it was not poverty that prompted the young David to jump on a boat with an uncertain destination. It was the need to find a place of his own, even if it meant being torn apart from family and friends. At first sight, El gran río is the account of Black Doh’s trip from a distant land and an utterly different world to an equally dissimilar milieu: Rosario, in the Province of Santa Fe. Black Doh spoke not one word of Spanish when he disembarked. Back in Guinea, everyone survived speaking three languages: soussou at home, and French and English for schooling and social and business activities. Black Doh’s communication problem was further compounded by the fact that, as he charmingly explains at the start of El gran río, “yo no daba el perfil correcto,” by which he meant that being black in a country like Argentina, where blackness has long been denied, hindered his possibilities when it came to finding a job or just a place to crash on other than a park. But there’s no bitterness in Black Doh’s words. A natural-born storyteller, Black Doh grew up listening to African music and learnt to rap as a child, and this is clearly evident in his narrative, marked by his peculiar, endearing accent. Black Doh is a charmer, and his yarn, as captured by director Plataneo, is captivating and enthralling. And this is probably the reason why, his broken Spanish notwithstanding, he takes no time in making good friends out in the street, where he sells quincaillerie and personal accessories, an activity blacks are stereotypically associated with here. Black Doh is just following and sticking to this misconception because he has an unbreakable will to survive, and peddling bijouterie will buy food and afford modest lodgings. Black Doh, as he likes to call himself and have others call him, is an artist, a musician — a rapper, more accurately. Of all the places he could have landed in after alighting the Vietnamese freighter, it is Rosario where Black Doh finds his home away from home, the place where, thanks to his cheerful nature and assimilation capacity, he makes good friends who share his passion for rap. And Rosario, as he likes to say with a mixture of candour and appreciation, “is full of very beautiful girls.” El gran río starts in majestic fashion: a sweeping view of the port of Rosario, the bow of an old ship, the sun gleaming on the horizon, the water lapping up the shoreline. The scene is set to haunting instrumental music that bespeaks faraway ports of call, strange lands, unknown destinations. It’s full of promise. The light then changes to subdued, far less spectacular shades, and moves on to downtown Rosario, where Black Doh starts to spin his yarn. The story is interspersed with footage from his hometown of Conakry, Guinea, focusing on a hamlet where life is simple and a bit precarious, but where shiny, solid colours materialize in the women’s handmade garments. Plataneo’s El gran río is not a biopic as such, in spite of all the traits in common with this film genre. It’s a fine, lovingly crafted documentary, a film with an engaging story to tell, and a most suitable on-screen narrator whose life, most likely, reflects the sojourn of us all and the mutually enriching cultural encounter resulting from an amalgam of ethnicities, cultures and life experiences. Black Doh certainly knows how to rap, and so does everyone involved in the making of this beautiful sojourn entitled El gran río, which might as well bear the title of Black Doh’s first album: Cruzando el mar.
Tres no son compañía Los títulos y los anticipos comerciales suelen (de hecho siempre lo hacen) generar expectativas en los potenciales espectadores. Si hablamos de calidad, el nivel de expectativa es inversamente proporcional a la satisfacción obtenida de la película en cuestión. Supongamos que albergamos expectativas altísimas sobre una peli X: por más que no sea mala, o aunque sea buena pero no superlativa, nuestras expectativas se verán defraudadas, necesariamente. En el caso inverso, si la expectativa es bajísima, casi cualquier menjunje nos vendrá bien y hasta nos parecerá bastante apetecible. Lo mismo se aplica a la temática. No es que uno se siente a ver un determinado género y no pueda aceptar, estoicamente, un viraje, un cambio de dirección de la historia y del tono elegido para contarla. A veces, sin embargo, la brecha entre lo prometido y lo que realmente se termina ofreciendo es tan grande que sólo cabe un alto grado de perplejidad. Supongo que ésta fue mi experiencia con 3: ¿Cómo recuperar a tu propia familia?, de Pablo Stoll, codirector de las exitosas 25 Watts y Whisky junto con Juan Pablo Rebella (fallecido en el 2006). De la expectativa temática me hago cargo, pues no tenía razón para suponer que 3… fuera un dramón familiar al estilo de Tsai Ming-Liang (He Liu / El río), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Tres monos), o Thomas Vinterberg (Submarino, de 2010 y aún no estrenada por aquí). Lo único que me cerraba, en todo caso, era el número 3, por el número de integrantes del clan en cuestión. De qué va la historia de 3 ¿Cómo recuperar a tu propia familia? Yo diría que el epigrama que sigue al título una comedia agridulce le sienta más que bien a este relato tipo composición hecha de Polaroids –o viñetas- ensambladas como para darles un sentido narrativo. La familia retratada en 3... se compone de Rodolfo (Humberto de Vargas), de profesión odontólogo, y en lo personal un obsesivo pero re simpático y bonachón gordito, obsesionado por la funcionalidad y la pulcritud de las cosas. Su primera esposa, Graciela (Sara Bessio) es taquígrafa de profesión, pero últimamente dedica sus días al cuidado de la tía Beba, de 87 años e internada en terapia intensiva. Ana, la hija adolescente de ambos (Anaclara Ferreyra Palfy), es estudiante secundaria; sus notas son excelentes, pero sus ausencias y llegadas tarde a clase ponen en peligro su año lectivo. Entre los tres personajes hay algo en común: la palabra desencuentro, eufemismo normalmente utilizado para denotar pelea, confrontación o algo por el estilo. No en esta familia. Aquí los desencuentros no son altercados: es la falta de conexión humana que los lleva a cruzarse, sin planearlo, en la puerta de casa o algún otro lugar, y mandarse a mudar siempre bajo la misma excusa: Yo ya estaba saliendo. Las puertas se abren, pero los encuentros entre ellos jamás se concretan, sobre todo entre Rodolfo, quien insiste en volver al que fuera su hogar y nota, una y otra vez, que ambas mujeres viven en medio de cierto desorden doméstico y de dejadez progresiva, que evidencian el rumbo errático de sus vidas. La ropa tirada en el living o amontonada en un dormitorio; la canilla del lavatorio que gotea; la pintura de las paredes que se descascara; el cielorraso con una incipiente mancha de humedad: pequeñas muestras que le hacen sospechar al obsesivo Rodolfo que no todo está tan bien como aparenta. Aquí entra en juego su volición para vencer la resistencia de su ex (reacia a todo cambio) y de su hija (no tan expulsiva, pero encerrada en su propio mundo). El pequeño universo que habita la familia parece restringirse al departamento descuidado, al hospital, al colegio, a los ridículos y vanos intentos del padre de integrarse a un equipo de fútbol amateur, a los momentos de insignificante intimidad de la hija con un compañerito de curso, o su deambular en busca de extraños y de un efímero encuentro sexual, paradójicamente más cálido que la relación con sus progenitores. En otras circunstancias y bajo la mirada de directores como los antes mencionados, todo haría prever un profundo, insondable drama existencial, una malaise subyacente por debajo de una normal cotidianeidad. La sorpresa es que 3... tiene más de comedia que de agridulce, y dependiendo del catador, ambos están un poco (bastante) diluidos. Las situaciones humorísticas no producen jocosidad, más bien una cierta ternura; y los momentos más duros distan mucho de los dolorosos cachetazos que nos da la vida, como la muerte de un ser querido luego de una interminable agonía. La conclusión es que, a pesar de las buenas intenciones de Stoll, 3... se queda en medias tintas. Si bien los personajes y las situaciones (no del todo bien resueltas) no son insatisfactorios, la película nos deja con una sensación de cierto vacío, y no nos referimos, precisamente, a bergmanianas angustias existenciales. Se trata, más bien, de un hilo conductor, de un eje narrativo, de una natural fluidez en el retrato de esta familia que pinta Stoll de modo bastante inconexo, como sus personajes. Lo mejor del film por lejos son las actuaciones de los tres protagonistas, sobre todo de Anaclara Ferreyra Palfy (la hija, personaje lleno de matices), y Sara Bessio (la madre agobiada por el rutinario trabajo de encriptar textos que no le importan un bledo, y abrumada por la responsabilidad y el dolor de la inexorable muerte de su tía Beba). Pero en definitiva 3... no alcanza a sumar puntos suficientes para lograr un sobresaliente o un muy bueno. Quizás un tibio regular sería mucho más justo.
Un hombre y una mujer El cine mainstream generalmente se las ve de figurillas si se trata de lidiar con cuestiones de género e identidad u orientación sexual. No es mera casualidad si consideramos que dichos temas han sido y, hasta un punto, siguen siendo tabú. Lo prohibido, en los años incipientes del cine y mucho más aún durante los nefastos años del Código Hayes, era la identificación completa, total e indisimulada con una identidad genética diferente de la aceptada socialmente (en el sentido de impuesto=permitido). Luego de Stonewall y de los movimientos por los derechos civiles de los años 60, el cine sobre géneros comenzó a tener un rostro más visible, pero tal vez restringido a problemáticas de relación y aceptación, tales como el coming out y las relaciones entre personas del mismo sexo. La temática transgénero, sin ser ajena a esta apertura, quedaba casi siempre en un segundo plano, o se la enfocaba desde el único costado permisible: la comedia o la parodia, como en la comedia de doble cruce de géneros Victor Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982), en la que Julie Andrews intentaba -inútilmente- hacernos creer que era una mujer que se ponía en la piel de un transformista masculino disfrazado de mujer. En medio de la confusión, Blake Edwards se daba el lujo de presentar, en un mainstream de Hollywood, personajes abiertamente gay o ambiguos. Cuando el doble juego de identidades sexuales ya parecía cosa del pasado, la talentosa actriz Glenn Close, devenida productora y guionista, decidió adaptar un cuento de George Moore basado en una idea original del director István Szabó. Junto con el renombrado novelista John Banville, Close escribió el guión de la inquietante, conmovedora y dolorosa El secreto de Albert Nobbs. A una edad en la que los guiones protagonizados por actrices no suelen abundar, Close, quien acaba de cumplir los 65, lejos se encuentra de la malhechora vampiresa de Atracción fatal (1987), acaso el primer film de la era del SIDA con una malsana pátina moralista sobre la sexualidad y la infidelidad marital. A nivel artístico y político, El secreto de Albert Nobbs se ubica a años luz de Atracción fatal. Se trata de un retrato descarnado de una sociedad intolerante e hipócrita: la Irlanda de fines del siglo XIX. El film, protagonizado por Close y dirigido por Rodrigo García (Con sólo mirarte, 1999; Nueve vidas, 2005), quien parece tener una afinidad muy particular con los vericuetos del mundo femenino, nos permite -más que atisbar- sumergirnos de lleno en la tragedia y el sufrimiento implícitos del cross dressing y del cambio de identidad sexual forzados y necesariamente negados por una sociedad predominantemente heterosexual y falocéntrica. El personaje de Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs, es un extraño pero extremadamente respetuoso y respetado maitre de un hotel para huéspedes aristocráticos (en realidad, se trata de un hotel de cierta categoría pero con aspiraciones mayores). Cortés e invisible, pero siempre presente a la hora de atender a los huéspedes, Nobbs esconde un secreto: su identidad sexual y social no es la verdadera, sino la que ha decido adoptar con el fin de conseguir trabajo en tiempos de acuciante crisis económica, atravesada por el fantasma de una virulenta peste que castiga primero a las clases más bajas y desposeídas, y luego amenaza el bienestar de los ricos y glamorosos. Si nos atenemos a los dichos de Close (Banville sólo se habría limitado a darle un toque y un acento irlandés a los diálogos), El secreto de Albert Nobbs se apoya en un sólido guión propio y casi sin despliegues de innecesario pintoresquismo. La historia de Albert Nobbs, de hecho, va mucho más allá de un simple cambio de identidades, pues se trata, en realidad, de la necesidad de adaptación y del deseo -tal vez imposible, más bien irreal- de traspasar las barreras impuestas por ancestrales mandatos sociales. Más allá de lo anecdótico (Nobbs conoce a un pintor de casas que también oculta un secreto y decide encarnar, hasta las últimas consecuencias, su rol transgénero masculino), la película cuenta con una apabullante actuación/personificación, y la dirección de Rodrigo García le imprime a la historia matices de credibilidad pocas veces vistos en el cine de recreación histórica. Al igual que el Albert Nobbs de la ficción, Glenn Close demuestra ser sorprendente y poderosamente multifacética. La actriz no sólo interpreta el rol principal con intachable devoción por cada pequeño detalle, sino que también se hace cargo (un increíble triplete) del guión y la producción. Y por si todo esto fuera poco, Close también compuso la canción original de El secreto de Albert Nobbs (la conmovedora balada Lay Your Head Down). A la hora de los Oscar, Glenn Close, nominada como Mejor Actriz, perdió ante la multinominada y premiada Meryl Streep (por La dama de hierro), una actuación excelente pero de ningún modo superior a la de Close. No obstante, El secreto de Albert Nobbs se lleva el mayor de los lauros: la autenticidad de una verdadera actriz de raza y creadora como Glenn Close, y el profundo conocimiento del universo femenino que siempre ha demostrado el director Rodrigo García.
She broke hearts, will break yours too The vulnerable side of the ultimate Hollywood diva in My Week with Marilyn SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE. How do you make a movie about a great star — the greatest of them all — without resorting to their iconic status and retracing their rise to that position? How do you reconstruct their transformation from mere mortal to demigod? A 20th century icon that fits the category was Marilyn Monroe, because she embodied all the traits and qualities inscribed in the collective unconscious. Michelle Williams and Eddie Redmayne in My Week with Marilyn Like most icons, it’s apparently easy to come up with visual recreations of Marilyn: a slight physical resemblance, the appropriate hairstyle, makeup, outfits and accessories, and an attitude to match. Impersonators or actresses who’ve attempted to bring back to life a larger-than-life personality like Marilyn know better: being equipped with the right props and accoutrements is not enough to create the illusion of authenticity. Sometimes a few snapshots and recorded lines of actual dialogue will do the job. Instead of the colossal task involved in full reconstruction, Colin Clark, a studio assistant who forced his way into Warner Bros. to take a job in any category, decided to write an account of the one week he spent with Marilyn when filming of The Prince and the Showgirl (1956) started in London. AFTER YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT. “Everyone remembers their first job. This is the story of mine. I was the youngest in a family of overachievers. My father was a world-famous art historian, and my brother was ahead of me in everything. I was always the disappointment,” a 23-year-old Clark says at the beginning of My Week with Marilyn, a film that exudes pure perfection in its account of the Hell-on-Earth battle between the renowned actor Lawrence Olivier and the US “dumb blonde” for export known as Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was at the height of her career and was already the most famous woman in the world. Olivier had long cemented his status as the UK’s greatest actor, but his popularity was waning. As Clark himself, addressing Monroe, states in his book of memoirs and in the film, “It’s agony because he’s a great actor who wants to be a film star, and you’re a film star who wants to be a great actress. This film won’t help either of you.” As was often the case when Marilyn stepped on a studio set to begin a new movie, cast and crew were well aware what lay in store for them. The insecure, mercurial, pill-popping Marilyn showed up hours late for the day’s shoot, or did not show up at all. Monroe, the man eater, was personally vulnerable, fragile and diffident as a performer in spite or perhaps on account of her training as a “serious actress” under the controversial Method deviced by Lee Strassberg. Monroe came to London chaperoned by Strassberg’s sister Paula, who not only coached Monroe’s lines but also supervised every aspect of her daily activities. At the time, Monroe, after a failed marriage to baseball great Joe Di Maggio, was married to America’s most prominent literary figure: playwright Arthur Miller. In the public eye, it was a staggering contrast: a high-ranking intellectual partnered with the beautiful but empty shell Marilyn was supposed to be. Mirroring Monroe’s and Miller’s union, the leads in The Prince and the Showgirl could not be a more unlikely pairing. Monroe’s stellar shine could have overshadowed Olivier’s, however gifted and unchallenged in his domain. On the other hand, Olivier was perceived by some (Monroe and Paula Strassberg themselves) as a potential threat to Marilyn’s standing as a performer. Monroe, full of fright, turned to Strassberg for professional and personal reassurance. But things were not that different at the other end: Olivier was in awe of Monroe’s beauty and innate star power, but unconsciously made every possible attempt to crush her acting skills to prove who was the boss at Warner’s lot. I WANNA BE LOVED BY YOU. Unknown to the public and the media, when Miller flew back to the US to visit family, there was a one-week gap during which the movingly fragile and desperate Monroe turned for comfort to a young, very young “assistant-assistant” director by the name of Colin Clark. In spite of being an Etonian destined for higher pursuits, Clark had it his way when he decided to break with family tradition and work his way up in the movie industry. Lanky, distinguished and handsome, Clark caught the eye of Monroe, who, like the helpless child she was at heart, wooed Clark to her side when Miller left. MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY. It was just one week, but it sufficed for Monroe to steal — and break — the young Clark’s heart. He would treasure those days for decades, and published a book of memoirs — The Prince, the Showgirl and Me — in 2004, the same year a TV documentary was made based on his cherished days with Monroe. Answering the question of how to portray a larger-than-life personality, filmmaker Simon Curtis — with an extensive background on TV as writer, producer and director — found the perfect source material in Clark’s book of memoirs. So this was how he went about it: he coproduced and directed an anecdotal biopic based on Clark’s books My Week With Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me. LIKE A WOMAN SHOULD. Starring the powerhouse of an actress named Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain, I’m Not There, Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine) My Week with Marilyn is a bittersweet, nostalgia-ridden film that packs raw emotion and sensitive performances by Williams as the troubled Monroe, and Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark. With a personal history curiously resembling, in more than one aspect, the real-life Clark, Redmayne too is an Etonian (he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge). Redmayne’s sweet, dreamy-eyed performance as Colin Clark smoothly drives the action in My Week With Marilyn, and all through the film’s 99-minute runtime he seems to be voicing the events of the seven achingly beautiful days during which he provided solace to the forlorn Marilyn Monroe, pitiably alone at the top. Physical resemblance between Monroe and Williams is not apparent — not even after the beauty rituals that allowed Marilyn herself to transmogrify into an unparalleled sex goddess. But Williams still does an overwhelming job exploring the frailty, insecurity and excruciating agony experienced by Monroe during her UK sojourn and, as intimated by the film, throughout her brief life. Williams’ performance is nothing short of pure perfection, so much so that you soon forget that this is an actress in Monroe garb speaking the lines written for her. Deftly directed by Simon Curtis, My Week with Marilyn details the Monroe -Olivier showdown and Monroe’s seven-day liaison with a young man who provided love, warmth and comfort when most needed. Eddie Redmayne could have been no better choice for the role of the young man infatuated by, in love with, a woman who could never allow herself to be the subject of unconditional love. The great Shakesperian actor Kenneth Branagh plays Olivier with the passion, rage and ultimate admiration for Monroe the real Olivier himself owned up to when filming of The Prince and the Showgirl wrapped up. And when the end credits start to roll to the music Monroe will always be associated with, you cannot help identifying with Colin Clark’s despair and the glamorous blonde’s resignation to be the woman everyone wanted her to be: Marilyn Monroe.
Opening the doors of perception Milagros Mumenthaler’s feature film début is a masterly, contemplative study in loss and bonding At some point in adult life, there’s bound to be a place called solitude, a territory inhabited by the ghosts of the past we refuse to let go of, a space where we no longer feel the safety of the people and objects wrapping us up as in a cocoon. Some people call it family in the more traditional sense, some others refer to it as shared loneliness, but the end result is always the same: finding shelter in the mutual comfort of others and having somebody to come home to. Milagros Mumenthaler’s film début Abrir puertas y ventanas is a metaphor for all of these pressing perceptions, centering as it does on three young sisters who must confront the sudden death of their grandmother, a university lecturer who also played mother to the girls and took care of the household’s every need. The three sisters —Marina, 21; Sofía, 20; and Violeta,18 — used to lead carefree lives in an old suburban mansion that had seen better days. It’s the middle of summer, the girls have lost their grandma some time during the end-of-year festivities, and they cope with the sweltering temperatures closing the window shades so that the sun won’t filter in, and sometimes venturing out on the garden to sunbathe, but mostly huddling together on the sitting-room sofa to watch TV, either blurry network broadcasts or a movie rented at the corner video store. Although they are in the same age range and separated by only a few years, it feels natural that the eldest, Marina (the strongest in character and determination) should try to steer a ship whose captain has disappointingly deserted them. It’s Marina who handles the little money they have left, the one who makes sure the utility bills are not left unpaid, the one who draws the grocery list with Spartan resolution, lest they should run out of supplies. Although this is a succinct description of what these girls are going through, it’s not as though screenwriter-director Mumenthaler were following a classic narrative pattern with a linear development. We learn about all these happenings along with the girls in the here and now, through snippets of chopped conversation, through murmur and words muttered to themselves rather than one another. In this sense, you’d be dead wrong to think that a film like Abrir puertas y ventanas is about a succession of events leading up in crescendo to a climactic grand finale. Introspective in nature, descriptive in its minimalist approach to character observation, Abrir puertas y ventanas concerns itself with the characters’ habitats — the house, photographed from a static perspective or through swirling camera movements around the girls’ own bedrooms — and the only tangible presence in it, which, paradoxically enough, is an absence. The three sisters are played by actors María Canale, Martina Juncadella and Ailín Salas with a much welcome combination of restraint and emotional outpouring, if such a thing is possible. Stressing the sexual tension in the air, actor Julián Tello embodies, literally, the masculinity the sisters root for — at times silently, at times graphically and shamelessly the kind of natural outlet everything is done in the household. Abrir puertas y ventanas — a ludicrous action standing for the girls’ need to open up and then slam shut slivers into their frightened souls — has a perplexing fixation with the way humans react to the loss of people and things that make up a safe environment. It’s a story about the painful process of transition from the self-centred universe of adolescence to abrupt adulthood, a turning-point in which life-making decisions must be made in spite of the phenomenon known as inertia in physics 101. If this were an HBO or Hallmark film, it would logically deal with the daily chores and responsibilities passed on by an adult onto unprepared children and their chronological, forced transformation and passage to adult life, interspersed with predictable disputes and jealousy among three defenceless children suddenly thrown into maturity. In contrast, Abrir puertas y ventanas is rich in character observation and short on explicit motives, reasons and modus operandi. It is, in short, a slow-moving but far from static illustration of apparently erratic conduct. Although this is clearly not a transcultural problem, some foreign critics have erroneously pointed to the film’s failure to spell out — either in full or in delineated form — such complications as a small stash of bank-notes drying out, how the girls manage to keep on running the household without visible signs of monetary income. True, eschewing such explanations in traditionally formatted stories would be tantamount to unforgivable mistake, but Abrir puertas y ventanas does express a preoccupation with such daily toils — it does so through a barely noticeable flurry of actions. If secretively snapping open and shut a chest of drawers in search of valuables is not a sign of pecuniary concern, I would like to know what is. If the youngest sister’s unashamed display of new, skimpy outfits, and coming back home dressed like a tart, is not another hint of where money — her own money — is coming from, I wonder what social commentary is all about. Money alone, however, will not suffice to fill the girls’ need for certainty. Certainty, Mumenthaler seems to be telling us, is to be found only in one’s own inner self; the outer world, the otherness, can only equip us with a modicum of self-assurance to forge ahead for a while, then it’s everyone for themselves. Let’s not, however, blame hurried opinion on lack of acute power of observation. A film like Abrir puertas y ventanas, enjoyably mute, is rather slow sinking in with all the force it is capable of at heart. It must be acknowledged that a film like Abrir puertas y ventanas, with its “dry” yet fully expressive narrative, owes much to Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga (2001), a groundbreaking experiment in acid social dissection. In turn, La ciénaga was an explicit allusion — and may have been a followup to — Leopoldo Torre Nilsson’s La terraza (1963), sadly misunderstood by critics and audiences alike and light years ahead of its time for its seemingly banal illustration of social malaise. Another pivotal reference in Abrir puertas y ventanas may be found in Torre Nilsson’s La caída (1959), a poignant exploration of solitude and confinement. Torre Nilsson, however, even if he set the action on eerily empty spaces, was more concerned with social decadence than with individual uneasiness with innermost circles. Far less sombre than Torre Nilsson and Martel, Mumenthaler’s Abrir puertas y ventanas, physically and symbolically, lets a gush of fresh air breeze into the house once the understated, conflictive relations among the sisters and with the milieu comes to the fore. Another issue addressed by Mumenthaler — as director Eugenia Sueiro does in her recent Nosotras sin mamá — is identity at individual and collective level within the confines of a family household. Which role is each family member expected to play? Which role is everyone ready to accept? In Abrir puertas y ventanas, it’s the middle daughter, Sofía, who disrupts her sisters’ apathy and lethargy, a wake-up call to the sad reality that not every one will be there all the time for one another. Eschewing the “normal” narrative pattern, Mumenthaler’s intelligent, resourceful script stays put where others would follow the ingrained precept that this state of affairs should help the narrative move ahead. It does, but it never follows a prescriptive approach. And herein lies Mumenthaler’s greatest cinematic achievement — in its beautifully understated expression of human sentiment. PRODUCTION NOTES Abrir puertas y ventanas (Back to Stay). Argentina / Switzerland / Netherlands, 2011. Written and directed by: Milagros Mumenthaler. Cinematography by: Martín Frías. Edited by: Gion-Reto Killias. Costumes by: Francois Nicolet. With: María Canale, Martina Juncadella, Ailin Salas, Julián Tello. Produced by: Alina Film, Ruda Cine, Waterland Film & TV, Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), Fortuna Films, Bordu films. Distributed by: Happiness Distribution ((France); Just Film Distribution (Netherlands); Look Now! (Switzerland); Primer Plano (Argentina). NC13. Running time: 100 minutes.
Elefante blanco: sacramental showdown Pablo Trapero’s new film is an overwhelming account of life on the fringe of society In most cosmopolitan capitals extreme poverty is, more often than not, found side by side with the type of splendour normally associated with capitalist, financial or governmental corruption. Humans are naturally prone to territorialism, and every inch of space stepping over strictly laid-out borders may become the subject of heated argument and conflagration. It runs across ethnicities, nationalities, political or religious affiliation, socioeconomic standing, the way you dress or smell, the kind of cooking you do at home, the stigmas attached to specific segments of society.