The new film by Argentine director Santiago Loza Si je suis perdu, c’est pas grave (It’s Alright If I’m Lost) is a visual account, a personal diary if you will, on the many aspects of a one-month acting workshop in an unknown city in France. Loza and fellow filmmaker Eduardo Crespo travelled to Europe to teach an actors’ workshop and once there, they found both the actors and the place so appealing that they decided to shoot a movie about them as well. That is to say a movie with no predefined blueprint, but one that was shaped in the making. So on one hand you have a poetic voice-over reflecting upon different states of mind, soul, feelings and sentiments as a smooth camera captures equally poetic views of the unknown city, which are far from banal post card images. And on the other hand, there are screen tests, walks in the park, scattered conversations, and informal activities here and there. All of it filmed without the filmmakers intruding in the scenario. And while there are a handful of nuances and warm observations throughout, just like there are some special moments captured in their alluring spontaneity, it’s equally true that the assortment of all the fragmented pieces fails to create a narrative that says something other than what can be seen at first sight. As a merely descriptive feature, you could say it’s resourceful enough, but when it comes to being observational in a profound way, I found there’s very little to meditate on. Cinematography is in tip-top shape, all the more so when it’s outdoors. You do feel kind of entranced as the camera goes over different sections of the city, in fact you may feel you are travelling there as well. Yet after a while the wandering experience, despite its occasional beauty, begins to wear thin. It looks nice but it feels somewhat vacuous. When it comes to the actors’ screen tests, things sometimes get a bit more interesting as off-frame voices comment on their expressive close ups and imagine possible lives for them. This is when Si je suis perdu, c’est pas grave acquires a playful quality. Yet, after a while, that wears off too.
Social media become source of inspiration for modern horror in dynamic flick First there was Michael Goi’s Megan Is Missing (2011), which mixes found footage with webcam scenes to tell the story of two teenage girls threatened by an Internet stalker. Then Zachary Donahue’s debut feature The Den (2013), about the dark fate of a young woman who chats with unknown people on a forum and all of the sudden turns into a witness to an online murder. And Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows (2014) focused on a blogger who spied on his favourite actress via his laptop to then have his life threatened when he got trapped in a web of webcams. Now Leban Grabiadze’s low-budget Unfriended furthers the above formal experiments and turns the gimmick into a legitimate and very effective piece of new horror cinema subgenre. Taking place in real time and shot without using cameras but instead screen captures, Unfriended is about six friends who meet in an online chat room and are unexpectedly and inexplicably hunted by a supernatural force emerging from the account of a dead friend — Unfriended’s original title was, in fact, Cybernatural. Everything you see is rigorously limited to what is on the screen of the protagonist, Blaire (Shelley Henning), a popular high-school girl who harbours some nasty secrets. This fixed framing device allows you to see video-chats, text-messaging sessions, Skype group sessions with her boyfriend and four friends and, most disturbingly, the Facebook messages coming from the dead girl, Laura Barnes. We find out that Laura killed herself exactly a year before out of shame after a video showing her passed out drunk was anonymously uploaded to YouTube. Of course, it went viral in a matter of minutes. For some reason, Laura’s ghost seems to know this particular group of friends is responsible for uploading the infamous video. It’s payback time. And so we have the first cyber-slasher, if you will. And yes, considering the formal characteristics of Unfriended, you probably think it makes for a non-cinematic, tedious experience. Yet I found it to be quite the opposite. That is to say that bearing in mind the limitations of the original gimmick, the film not only takes advantage of its potential but also exploits the many online applications to their fullest in a very precise manner. Which means it’s dynamic, smart and occasionally surprising. What struck me the most is that it all feels realistic and spontaneous. As the many windows pop out, are maximized and minimized, and messages are sent and received, suspense and tension are skilfully built step by step, little by little, and using non-digitally enhanced effects. By the way, there’s another video uploaded to YouTube besides the embarrassing one and it is quite unsettling and realistic: the video of Laura shooting herself in the face in the high school campus. Moreover, there’s much logic to what the characters do in order to get rid of Laura’s ghost. At first, they do the things you do at home when your computer goes nuts and seems possessed by an evil force. You know, it all starts working incorrectly and so you open this program and close the other one, open new sessions and then close them, and so forth. But then they realize that their online group chat truly is haunted and this is when everything they do fails to make the spirit go away. However, it’s not only just a game of who gets killed first and how. There are also some well-kept secret evil doings and sins that each friend perpetrated against the others and so they were first victimizers and are now victims. According to these friends, Laura had it coming because she was always mocking and criticizing others, but when you find out what’s been hidden, you realize that this group of friends had it coming too. It comes as poetic justice that Facebook, the place to have hundreds of friends, is where unfriendly messages come from. It’s even more ironic that dead Laura has now more friends in her community page than she did when she was alive. Not that Unfriended is a profound take on the effects of cyberbullying or a study in the illusion of friendship in these cyber times. It doesn’t want to be so either. Instead, it’s a source for modern horror that boasts more than a couple of effective jump frights, a tormenting feeling that surfaces as the characters reveal their dark sides, and a rebooting of the vengeful ghost that comes to right the wrongs. And although the format wears thin every once in a while and even if consulting a demonic possession web page to get rid of Laura’s ghost is too artificial when compared to the rest of the movie there certainly are more assets than flaws to be found in Unfriended. Production notes Unfriended (US, 2014). Directed by Levan Gabriadze. Written by Nelson Greaves. With Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson, Shelley Hennig. Cinematography by Adam Sidman. Film Editing by Parker Laramie, Andrew Wesman. Running time: 85 minutes.
Ana Katz’s refreshing film strikes a perfect balance between laughter and angst Life isn’t easy for young, first-time mothers with newborn babies. Ask Liz (Julieta Zylberberg), she should know. Every day she takes her baby Nicanor in the stroller for a walk around the park. And she’s pretty much all by herself since her husband, Gustavo (Daniel Hendler) travels a lot because of work. In fact, he’s now in Chile filming a volcano — of all things! So Liz and Gustavo only communicate via Skype, whenever possible. To top it all off, Liz needs someone to help her with the house chores, and finding the right person is no easy task. On an ordinary afternoon, Liz meets Rosa (Ana Katz) and baby Clarissa at the park. She also a meets a group of moms with their kids, but for some reason she befriends Rosa and Clarissa, not the other moms. Perhaps because Rosa appears to be as lonely and helpless as she is, while all the other moms cheerfully celebrate the joys of motherhood. So it’s no surprise that Rosa and Clarissa soon become a growing presence in Liz’s life. But as comforting as having a new friend is, there’s also something odd about Rosa. Perhaps it’s her insistence to be with Liz all the times, or her nosy attitude, or that she is in need of money, or most likely that she wants Liz to take her, Clarissa and her sister Renata to a small town in the province of Buenos Aires so that Renata can meet in person a guy she’s met online. Of course, it’s Liz the one who has to do the driving with her own car. Now Liz feels she wants out of this friendship. And she feels a bit scared too. Mi amiga del parque (My Friend from the Park), the new film by Ana Katz (El juego de la silla, Una novia errante, Los Marziano) is more than a refreshing surprise within the many plainly average, or below average, local films released this year. Unlike them, Katz’s new feature has a distinctive personality: it features characters that are initially built upon stereotypes only to be soon fleshed out with unpredictable nuances. It boasts a contagious, perfectly calibrated sense of humour, it works well both in the spoken text and the disguised subtext, and it’s filled with gripping performances from the entire cast — including that of Ana Katz herself. That alone is a significant achievement, but Mi amiga del parque goes quite a few extra miles. It examines the joys and hardships of motherhood in both a comic and a dramatic key, while also addressing loneliness and hopelessness in a world without men in an apparent nonchalant manner. Katz strikes a perfect balance between what makes you laugh and what anguishes you, which is a very hard thing to do. Subtly understated at times and amusingly over the top at other times, this is the kind of work that comes out of good scriptwriting and a very assured direction. It very confidently works within the realm of the absurd, but not because what happens is absurd in itself but rather because of how Katz depicts it. It’s the how what matters, not the what. In this regard, you could say that the sardonic edge is reminiscent of the oeuvre of Martín Rejtman, no less than one of Argentina’s best filmmakers and the spiritual father of the so-called New Argentina cinema. But we are not talking about copycat filmmaking, but rather that both Katz and Rejtman share a same sensibility to start with. Then each one follows a very different path, but sometimes their characters seem to inhabit the same small odd world. Which in this case is to be celebrated. Production notes Mi amiga del parque (Argentina, 2014). Directed by Ana Katz. Written by Ana Katz and Inés Bortagaray. With Julieta Zylberberg, Ana Katz, Maricel Álvarez, Mirella Pascual, Malena Figó, Daniel Hendler. Cinematography: Bill Nieto. Editing: Andres Tambornino. Running time: 84 minutes.
et in 1958 in Frankfurt, the fairly well-crafted German film Labyrinth of Lies (Im Labyrinth des Schweigens), directed by Giulio Riciarelli and nominated in the Foreign Film category at the Oscars, is a sharp, meticulous take on postwar Germany that focuses on an often-forgotten historical period, meaning from the late 1950s onwards, a time during which a large part of the country refused to acknowledge its war crimes, despite the revelations that surfaced during the Nuremberg trials. A few minutes into the film, a journalist presses charges against an ex-Auschwitz commander, whom he recognized by chance on the street and who is now a school teacher. Soon enough, Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling), a young prosecutor eager to deal with more than parking tickets, starts an inquiry to unveil hidden truths but his efforts are thwarted by different political and bureaucratic procedures. Not surprisingly, Germany at large is not exactly keen on facing its hideous mass murders. There are even lots of people who claim they have no idea what Auschwitz was. So Labyrinth of Lies exposes not only the conspiracy of government branches to cover up Nazi crimes after World War II, but that of prominent German institutions as well. And it also shows how this period came to an end. In real life, fierce public prosecutor Fritz Bauer was the one who played a key role in starting the trials in which some infamous murderers were condemned. As for Johann Radmann, the protagonist of Riciarelli’s film, he’s a composite created out of Fritz Bauer and two other prosecutors who participated in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. As far as a cinematic work, Riciarelli’s debut feature has some assets as well as some drawbacks, but for the most part it overcomes the biggest hindrances from which it suffers. It’s definitely not the work of an auteur seeking to innovate film aesthetics, but it’s a reasonably well-shot genre piece — even if by the book. It plays as a political thriller, a personal drama and a historical account, and while it doesn’t equally succeed in these three veins, it’s not a total disaster in any of them. Well, perhaps the subplot involving a romance, which aims at creating a more nuanced character, ends up being quite irrelevant. But as a thriller, it has a somewhat tense pulse and enough twists and turns to keep you busy trying to figure out what the next thing to happen will be. More importantly perhaps, as a historical drama it’s well narrated, detailed and exhaustive. Most viewers are unlikely to be that familiar with many sides of the complex history of postwar Germany and in this regard it will prove to be useful and moderately enlightening. One thing is for sure: it’s not your boring period piece, a history lesson that might make you doze. And just like many of the lines from the dialogue carry a good deal of the film’s ideas and sound too perfectly elaborated and too well-written instead of spoken — real-life people don’t usually know how to say what they mean exactly the way they mean it — this is somehow made up for by the overall decent acting from the entire cast, including some exceptional moments that highlight the best parts of Labyrinth of Lies. Production notes Labyrinth of Lies (Im Labyrinth des Schweigens, 2014). Directed by Giulio Ricciarelli. Written by Elisabeth Bartel, Giulio Ricciarelli. With: Alexander Fehling, Andre Szymanski, Friederike Becht, Johannes Krisch, Hansi Jochmann, Johann von Buelow, Robert Hunger-Buehler, Lukas Miko, Gert Voss. Running time: 122 minutes.
In Nadav Lapid’s Israeli film The Kindergarten Teacher, winner of the Best Director award at this year’s BAFICI and at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Nira (Sarit Larry) is a married, middle-aged, hard-working and loving kindergarten teacher with a genuine penchant for poetry. Though it seems she’s always enjoyed it, it’s only now that she’s started to try to pen her own poems. One day she learns that a young boy in her Kindergarten class, five-year-old Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), has an uncanny ability to create and recite his own poetry, which he spouts in sudden bursts, as if he was in a trance. Nira finds Yoav’s poetry to be moving and inspiring — it’s filled with mature, meditative words you wouldn’t expect from a young child. So it won’t take long until Nira starts spending a great deal of time with Yoav, both trying to stimulate his ability and writing down his poems. But it’s more complex than that. Nira also shields the young poet from his classmates because she fears they could damage his sensibility with their banality. Moreover, she reads his work in her creative writing class as though it was her own. And when she finds out that the boy’s nanny (also a wannabe actress) dismisses the boy’s genius, but also uses his poems as her own for her auditions, then she feels it’s her duty to have her fired. To top it all off, the child’s parents had a recent ugly divorce, and his father, who has custody of him, feels his son’s poetry is pure nonsense, if not just crap. So Nira decides it’s time to intervene in the kid’s life since, in her mind, his needs and wants are not being fulfilled. She believes his poetry won’t flourish if he remains in his current environment. Like Lapid’s previous film Policeman (2011), winner of Best Film and Best Director award at the BAFICI in 2012, his new opus The Kindergarten Teacher hinges heavily on allegory, despite the fact that it works perfectly in its literality too, something that is very hard to pull off. You could say that, on the very surface, this is the story of a teacher who cares too much for her student’s genius and is obsessed by it, and so she will go out of her way to the point of obsession to establish a rather unusual bond with him. Even if not explicitly, there’s the suggestion that Nira finds some passionate sentiments when being in touch with the boy’s sensibility. Perhaps even with the boy himself as well, as if he were a perfect object of desire that embodies the beauty of poetry Nira can’t find in the world she inhabits (her husband makes it clear that he couldn’t care less about her newfound calling). In a sense, to Nira there’s sensuality in this type of beauty, there’s sensuality in the body of a poet. The liaison between this peculiar kindergarten teacher and this equally peculiar child-poet will take a different shape as the drama unfolds. But it’s best for viewers to discover it for themselves: suffice it to say that it’s the teacher who shapes the relationship to her own needs, both imaginary and real, rather than the kid’s needs. On an allegorical level, you can take the kid’s poetry and the beauty that emanates from it — both at odds with the ordinarily prosaic world that surrounds him — as some kind of threat to his environment as well as to others. After all, he’s a poet in times where poets are hated, a sensitive soul in a country plagued by the violence of war and the desensitization that comes along with it. In times of peace, poetry tends to be stimulated and celebrated, but in times of war it often bears no value and it’s dismissed. And poets are isolated. You can also think of the world where the child-poet lives in as a universe overridden with routine, malaise, and indifference. Religion has stopped making sense long ago, spiritual life seems to have vanished for good, and profound emotional connections are not to be found. So what would happen if, amidst so much emptiness, an intimate connection with life and beauty suddenly emerged? What effect would it have on this world? Would it be possible for it to thrive? Fortunately, no definite answers are to be found in The Kindergarten Teacher as Lapid knows better than that and asks viewers to reflect upon such a complex scenario and then draw their own conclusions. Production notes The Kindergarten Teacher (Israel, 2014). Written and directed by Nadav Lapid. With Sarit Larry, Avi Shnaidman, Lior Raz, Hamuchtar, Ester Rada, Guy Oren. Cinematography: Shai Goldman. Editing: Era Lapid. Running time: 119 minutes.
Another horror film has reached the local screens — and it’s not good news. Like so many horror flicks previously released this year — Clown, Jessabelle, Poltergeist, Demonic — the US-Spanish-Colombian co-production Out of the Dark, directed by Luis Quílez, is as forgettable as it is unnecessary. Overridden with clichés, over-plotted and far from spooky, Quílez’s debut feature is neither a personal auteur film nor a good genre piece. And to think that three scriptwriters were in charge of developing this supernatural story about Colombian ghosts of children burned alive that seek revenge any way they can. The fictional town of Santa Clara, Colombia, is the setting for the misfortune faced by Sarah (Julia Stiles) and Paul (Scott Speedman), and their young daughter Hannah (Pixie Davies) who move there to take over a family-owned paper manufacturing plant. Sarah’s father Jordan (Stephen Rea) gives them a large, pricey house by the forest to use as their home. Soon enough, the family will find out about an infamous event from the past: all the children in the area were kidnapped for ransom by the conquistadors. Even though the families in the village paid the ransom as told, the conquistadors didn’t keep their end of the bargain and burned them alive instead. If there’s one moderately good thing to say about Out of the Dark, that is the ghosts themselves are slightly disturbing: half-seen, dressed in rags, possibly burnt beyond recognition. Even when you can only see their silhouettes stalking the little girl, they somehow convey a certain sense of doom. And that’s it. On second thought, the performance of Julia Stiles is watchable, unlike those of Scott Speedman, Pixie Davies and the rest of the cast. When Pixie starts running a fever and a severe rash after the ghosts visited her while she was sleeping, she’s taken to Santa Clara Hospital to be examined. At first, the doctor says she sees no signs of illness — dumb Colombian doctors, you know — but then she says she can run some blood tests anyway. The problem is that it will take her weeks to get the results. Perhaps a couple of months. The moronic notion here is that in less developed countries such as Colombia, healthcare is completely inadequate and resourceless. And while that may be partly true, it’s actually truer that blood tests do not take several weeks at all. Healthcare is not nearly in such bad shape in Colombia. Only an insulting Hollywood cliché says that. There are many other clichés, such as an old local woman, possibly an indigenous, who reveals some secrets with a husky voice and a stern look in her eyes. Remember we’re not talking about self-parody. On the contrary, Out of the Dark intends to be realistic and dramatic, but it’s poorly scripted and tediously directed. One crucial thing in these types of horror films is the frights, which should come hand in hand with suspense and surprise. But in Out of the Dark, the frights are both predictable and clumsily executed. Same thing with way the storyline unfolds: far too contrived and simply too hard to believe. Production notes Out of the Dark (US/Colombia/Spain, 2014). Directed by Luis Quílez. Written by Javier Guillón, David Pastor, Álex Pastor. With Scott Speedman, Pixie Davies, Julia Stiles. Cinematography: Isaac Vila. Editing: Bernat Vilaplana. Running time: 92 minutes.
Demonic is presented and produced by James Wan, which could initially be taken as a good sign. After all, the director of Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, and also producer of the Saw franchise and Annabelle, has made some of the best recent horror films. But then again you know how it goes when an accomplished filmmaker presents the work of an unknown director: more often than not, the showcased film is in dire need of a prestigious name for marketing purposes since it doesn’t stand alone very well — to say the least. And Demonic, directed by Will Canon (Brotherhood) is a case in point. Not that the story is ill-conceived from the start, on the contrary, but the problems lie in its execution. Because what good is a story if it’s not properly narrated? And though far from original, the premise of Demonic held some potential. In a few words: a group of teenagers summon spirits in a house where a mass murder took place years ago. But the séance goes awry and a new body count begins. So a detective and a psychologist team up to investigate the entire affair. Right before the ending, there’s a hard-to-predict and quite nice twist that makes sense with all that happened before and resignifies it. The most visible, obvious problem is the acting. Ranging from poor to mediocre, none of the performances is gripping enough to make you care for the characters — or to believe in them, for that matter. Then there’s the constant back-and-forth switch between the past and the present, which by itself may be a good strategy to create intrigue; however, in this particular case it only lessens the overall tension and hinders the suspense since its timing is off-cue and the editing is clumsy. Worst of all: the jump scares are quite ineffective and largely predictable — to be honest, there are two or three that hit the right notes, but that’s about it. Once again, there’s found footage that could’ve been used more creatively, all the more so considering how important it is for solving the mystery. On the plus side, the twist right before the ending reveals a somewhat original idea, which is not that farfetched and turns the movie into darker stuff. Also, to a certain degree, the dramatic precariousness of some scenes may make you smile and enjoy them as guilty pleasures. But none of these moderate assets manage to make up for all the other things that are downright wrong. Production notes Demonic (US, 2015). Directed by Will Canon. Written by Max La Bella, Will Canon, Doug Simon. With Maria Bello, Frank Grillo, Cody Horn. Cinematography: Michael Fimognari. Editing: Josh Schaeffer. Running time: 83 minutes.
“There’s no doubt about the testimonial value that documenting a certain time in the life of a great writer has. And we’re talking about a very special time period, meaning the revision of a writer’s own life by reading a diary he’s kept for 50 years. First, a personal document comes out of that and at the same time there’s also ‘a time capsule,’ which contains half a century of Argentine life,” says filmmaker Andrés Di Tella (La televisión y yo, Fotografías, Hachazos, Máquina de sueños) about his new documentary 327 cuadernos (327 Notebooks), which provides a lot more than an insightful gaze into the life of Ricardo Piglia, one of Argentina’s great contemporary writers. Di Tella could not have chosen a more appropriate time for his project: the return of Piglia to Argentina after having lived abroad for several years. Among other things, Piglia comes back with a very important goal: to review, for the first time, the 327 notebooks that make up his 50-year-old personal diary, a document that also speaks eloquently of key aspects of Argentina’s social and political life. This way, 327 cuadernos, the film, comes across as an inspired film diary of the reading of a multifaceted diary. As in many of his previous films, Di Tella shows once again he has a knack for interviewing well-known personalities who still have much to say, despite having been interviewed many times before by an endless number of journalists. That’s why it’s the filmmaker’s ability to establish a rich conversation what triggers apparently lost memories, secrets, and an occasional confession. As Piglia is interviewed — with Di Tella rightly keeping out of the frame — the topics he tackles and the observations he makes are sometimes accompanied by archive footage from both his personal life and Argentina’s politics. So in some cases they do attain a larger scope, whereas other times short silences and pauses allow the writer’s words to linger in viewers’ minds on a more personal note. Never solemn or preachy, 327 cuadernos is not keen on providing mere information you can get anywhere. Instead, it probes deep in the writer’s soul in a very effective and nonchalant manner. And while the use of a voice-over to glue the account together usually is not a very interesting technique because it’s so overworked, in this particular case the result is the exact opposite. Piglia’s voice, with its soft inflexions and rephrasing, is more of an emotional vehicle than an informative one. In short, Di Tella’s documentary is a fine auteur work with many singularities that turn into a brief study of a man whose writings have been enjoyed by many generations, here and abroad. Where and when Gaumont Movie Theatre (Rivadavia 1635), Malba (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415). Saturday 10pm, Sunday 6pm Production notes 327 cuadernos (Andrés Di Tella, 2015) Cinematography: Guillermo Ueno, Gastón Girod. Editing: Valeria Racioppi, Felipe Guerrero. Running time: 78 minutes.
“It is a fact that we are constantly choosing those who we want to be accompanied by and those who we want to give ourselves to. Same thing happens with our children, be them biological or not. In the collective unconscious, there's this notion about adoption suggesting that the desire of the adults should be priorized — instead of the desire of finding a family for one or several kids. Our film shows a change of paradigm: the children are the ones who have the right to have a family — instead of the adults having the right to be parents,” says Mario Levit, director of the documentary Ellos te eligen, an informative, sensitive take on the usually long and winding road to adopting children in Argentina. By telling the story of Laura Salvador and Laura Rubio, two caring mothers who now work together and adopted children years ago when they still didn't know each other, Levit draws a detailed, up-to-date portrayal of the different aspects of a complex scenario. The self-managed groups run by Salvador and Rubio, as well as other women and men, work for or organize forums and meetings for prospective adoptive parents, helping them with their questions, doubts and the bureaucratic obstacles and flaws of the current legislation. With plenty of data and exhaustive research, Ellos te eligen also poses many hard-to-answer questions. How to know if a couple wanting to adopt children is in fact suitable to do so? What kind of environment will they offer them? What can be done to find parents for children with some kind of illness? Why do some adoptions work and others don't? In turn, the answer to these and other questions provides a most useful guide to orientate not only prospective adoptive parents, but also society at large. It's not only about raising awareness, but also about doing it the right way. There's also a brief history of how the adoption system has changed over the years, which helps understand why things are better done today than before. In a very concrete manner, Levit gives his interviewees the liberty and confidence to speak up, and always bears in mind that the children are the ones who have a moral and legal right to have parents. That’s why each decision must be in accordance with their well being and choice. After all, adopting children is a profound act of love and nothing but. Production notes: Ellos te eligen. Argentina, 2014. Written by: Mario E. Levit, S. Bugallo, M. Maran. Directed by: Mario E. Levit. Cinematography: Henry Rodríguez Ortiz. Sound: Javier Ruiz. Editing: Andrés Tambornino. Produced by: Cruz del Sur Cine — UNTREFMEDIA (Universidad de 3 de febrero). Running time: 62 minutes. Limited release: Gaumont.
Winner of Best Film in the Generation parallel section of the 2014 Berlinale and in the Guad-alajara Film Festival, Argentine Matías Lucchesi’s seductive debut film Ciencias naturales (Natural Sciences) tells the story of Lila (Paula Hertzog), a 12-year-old student at a boarding school in a rural area in the province of Córdoba who, together with her teacher, Jimena (Paola Barrientos) sets to meet her father for the first time — although he may not even be aware of her existence or may not want to meet her at all. To top it all, Lila doesn’t even know her dad’s name or what he looks like. But she knows where he was working at the time he met her mother. And though that’s very little to start on, that won’t stop her from going back and forth until the long awaited rendez-vous takes place. In turn, Lila’s search for her dad will give way to a change in her teacher’s feelings towards a story of her own that also has to do with deep loss. There are many good things to be said about Ciencias naturales, the first of them being the alluring performances that always ring true. Paula Hertzog and Paola Barrientos, as well as Sergio Boris, Alvin Astorga and the late Raúl Goetz, walk, talk and behave as naturally and spontaneously as it gets. Of course, the colloquial, unaffected dialogue which conveys nothing but the exact meaning of the drama is the other strong pillar for the characters to flesh up in a convincing manner. Unlike many local features which use minimalist narrative to strive for big meanings, Ciencias naturales says a lot with very little, hinging on the appeal of perfectly built scenes that may feel unscripted but are indeed written with enormous attention to detail. Lucchesi does not want to enlighten either his characters or his viewers — and that’s to be immensely celebrated. And the decision to not explain a lot of things — such as why Lila wants to meet her dad so much, why her mom doesn’t want her to do so, whatever happened between her dad and her mom, or why the father abandoned them — is certainly a more than fine strategy to allow the drama to focus on what’s going on now and what’s to come out of that rather than making an anatomy of a search for one’s identity. That’s not what Ciencias naturales is all about. Instead, it’s about the here and now. Such assured sense of narrative ends up shaping up a tale that hides unexpected layers behind apparent plainness, and even if the ending may be a bit heavy-handed in its symbolism, it nonetheless feels appropriate and realistic — more so when compared to the kind of ending you’d usually have for a film about a girl searching for her unknown father. Production notes Ciencias naturales (Argentina/France, 2014). Directed by Matías Lucchesi. Written by Matías Lucchesi, Gonzalo Salaya. With Paula Herzog, Paola Barrientos, Sergio Boris, Arturo Goetz, Eugenia Alonso. Cinematography by Sebastián Ferrero. Editing: Delfina Castagnino. Running time: 71 minutes.