Lucía (Celeste Cid) and Manuel (Leonardo Sbaraglia) have been married for quite a few years and have a seven-year-old son, Santi (Máximo Silva), whom they love. As husband and wife, they still care for each other, yet the truth is they are no longer in love. At best, they’re going through a crisis they would rather not talk about. It even seems they do want to break up, but without acknowledging it. In any case, they long for other bodies, other feelings, and other lives. They think they need a breath of fresh air. If they are no longer having a good time, why stay together that much? As they undergo their crisis, Lucía and Manuel try to make a new home for themselves in a residential area outside the hectic Buenos Aires. In the meantime, they move in with their parents, and it’s easy to see they feel they are teenagers once again. Too bad he’s in his early forties, and she is in her late thirties. Not that they care, anyway. You are as young as you feel, right? These are some one of the main questions posed by Argentine filmmaker Anahí Berneri in her new film Aire libre. But they should be understood as critiques, not as desirable manners to think your way out of a sentimental crisis. Berneri casts an acute, never condescending gaze on how many couples implicitly agree on how not to deal with their problems, and so go for temporary love affairs with others. Or how they decide to terminate their relationship because of fear of confronting one another. Many times, they would rather deceive themselves with the false promise of sharing a bright new sky with the next person to come. As if love was that easy. But Berneri does not judge her characters even for a second. She clearly exposes their erratic behavior, their implicit and explicit aggressions, the ways they find to establish some distance, how their bodies don’t make love to one another anymore, what they do with their frustrations, and how unwilling they are to make some kind of commitment or alliance that would at least give them a chance to recover their relationship. Despite their complaints, it looks like they’re comfortably numb. Aire libre draws a detailed, very telling state of things and asks viewers to witness it all — not a pretty sight. Following a very accomplished naturalistic vein, situations, episodes and occurrences take place in a restrained fashion. Granted, there are just a few outbursts of violence here and there, but for the most part waters still run deep. Don’t expect major dramatic turning points for there are almost none. It’s not about grandiloquence or big gestures. It’s just that tedium and carelessness have been taking their toll for too long. In the name of love, somebody should have been paying attention.
“Each artist has a language. When I started, I never imagined that everything that happened to me was ever going to happen. If there’s a secret, I think it’s that you always have to keep moving, searching, and trying to transcend. The year 2005 was key for me: I entered the market of Buenos Aires, which though is a small market if compared with those of the rest of the world, it was great that my work could be seen in many places. I went to Buenos Aires to try my luck. I said to myself: I want to make a living as an artist. And it turned out just fine”, stated renowned Argentine visual artist Milo Lockett in a recent interview. And he should know. For he’s quite a phenomenon as regards not only his art, but also as a social actor. For starters, he’s one of the most sought-after visual artists of Argentina — he sells hundreds of works per year; he paints on canvas, but also on sculptures, sneakers, mugs, buildings, furniture, and T-shirts; he was the revelation of the ArteBA fair back in 2006, and only three years later he was chosen as artist of the year — together with León Ferrari. His work has been exhibited in countless galleries locally, but also abroad, and his admirers come from all walks of life. Yet Milo Lockett likes to be seen as a social referent as he’s strongly involved in many ongoing projects for the needy: free painting workshops in the provinces of Chaco, Jujuy, Corrientes, Misiones, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, but also in Paraguay and Brazil. He donates some forty paintings per year to auctions to raise funds for the Hospital Pediátrico of Resistencia, Chaco, the city where he lives since his birth back in 1967. And believe it or not, there’s much more. What’s even better is that such multifaceted, prolific individual has been skilfully portrayed in the Argentine documentary Rey Milo, produced and directed by Federico Bareiro. Following a very well executed conventional mould, Bareiro interviews the artist himself, friends, collaborators, art critics, and gallery owners (among others), and intersperses their eloquent testimonies with significant scenes of the artist at work, be it in his own workshop or in those organized outside, such as one he conducted with teenagers with Down Syndrome who painted the walls of the school for the Wichi community of Chaco. So not only you see putting hands to work, but you also have a chance to get familiar to how he personally relates to those who academically know little or nothing about art, and yet much predisposition and energy to make a social transformation through art — something that to Milo is more important than art itself. After all, he says he feels he’s done everything he could do art wise, and would now like to retire to fully devote himself to social work — without involving politics in it. Unlike so many recent documentaries, Rey Milo is also accomplished in formal terms. Thanks to the use of wide angle lenses, spaces are rendered in all their dimensions, so many frames of the film look like paintings brimming with primary, saturated colours. Interviewees are also sometimes bathed in red or blue, with the kind of lighting that brings forward shapes and volumes. But don’t get me wrong: this is no flashy experiment in formalism, it appropriately doesn’t want to be one. Instead, it’s the manner chosen by the filmmaker to accompany the film’s subject with an agreeable set of aesthetics that would never eclipse it. For it’s all about Milo Lockett, the man behind the artist.
Brothers torn apart in strong revenge drama After having made the sweetly melancholic and understated Crazy Heart (2009), the story of an alcoholic country music artist whose professional and sentimental life is anything but fulfilling, American filmmaker Scott Cooper’s next film was set to be highly anticipated. And while the recently released Out of the Furnace, a strong revenge drama involving brothers and fighters, is no masterpiece, it still ranks among the best mainstream releases so far this year. Cooper’s new outing is the type of film that meets most of the expectations it arises, has more than a few outstanding scenes, and misses on some opportunities that could have made it more gripping. Out of the Furnace spins the tale of two brothers, Russell (Christian Bale) and Rodney (Casey Affleck) who care deeply for one another, even if they have taken quite different paths in life. Surely the fact that life has been unrewarding for both makes them more aware of the importance and necessity of keeping their bond alive, and be there for one another, come what may. Think that Russell does exactly what his family has been doing for ages: he works at a steel mill that offers no future whatsoever, makes very little money, and actually wears him down little by little. He’s got a girlfriend, the beautiful Lena (Zoe Saldana), a school teacher with a tender heart who wants him to work less so they can share more time together (he often works double-shifts). He also has a dying father (Charles David Richards) whom he has to take care of on a daily basis. And there are the everyday problems too. As for Rodney, he’s a soldier back from Iraq, where he had most traumatic experiences and gained nothing at all. On the contrary. He resents having fought there and hates the idea of spending the rest of his life at a steel mill in a poor, two-bit town. And he’s got debts left and right. So first he thinks gambling is the way to pay them, but when that fails, he goes for bare-knuckle fighting. This is when the town’s shark, John Petty (Willem Dafoe) and Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), an irascible, violent drug dealer, enters the scene. Of course, none of the plans Rodney makes to pay his debts actually works out. Instead, expect vicious fights, a couple of cruel killings, and a bloody brotherly revenge. Just like Crazy Heart was driven by a stellar performance by Jeff Bridges, Out of the Furnace is also an actors’ movie. Christian Bale turns brilliantly turns Russell into an afflicted, yet energetic character with many shades, someone you can relate to in how he worries about his brother. And in how much he strives to avoid the unavoidable. Casey Affleck’s plays a less complex individual, but he still makes you care, feel sorry, and be angry for Rodney, all at the same time. Together with Bale, they carry the heart of the movie and do wonders. But Willem Dafoe and Woody Harrelson simply resort to formulaic (and effective) acting, whereas Zoe Saldana can’t do much for her underdeveloped character — not that she’s a very good actress, anyway. In contrast, Sam Shepard does a very good job with his equally underdeveloped character, which helps set gloomy tone of the film. All of its assets, there’s a gritty realism to Out of the Furnace that makes it immediate and convincing from the word go. A palette of drained out, brownish, grey and bluish tones, together with a rough cinematic texture, convey the shabbiness of the town, its abandonment and its bleakness. Nature is rendered with no embellishment, there are no blue skies anywhere. People behave, talk and argue pretty much like they would in these kind of places, one can presume. Nothing is extraordinary here — except the fierce bare-knuckled fighting. Yet as accomplished as the atmosphere is, it somehow fails to make up for a more profound, introspective approach that sometimes the story calls for. Take the relationship with the father, the love affair, or the relationship between Rodney and John Petty: there’s certainly more material here than what Cooper cares to take into mind. It’s like opening sub plots only for setting up the conflict — and leaving it at that. But other times, in many of the conversations between brothers, or when moments of solitude arise, hidden emotional chords surface to superb effect. This is when the film becomes very touching, when you really sink into the characters’ minds and hearts. Then what could have been a mere revenge movie becomes so much more. For a drama of brothers and fighters on the verge of destruction can be quite absorbing.
Women with balls scores big time onscreen Everyone knows soccer is the Argentine sport by definition, despite the fact that polo really is the national sport. But when you think of soccer, you think of men, don’t you? However, something not many people know is that Argentine women’s soccer is actually on the rise, even if it doesn’t have the development and support men’s soccer has. For instance, there’s no professional league. But there are fervent amateur players who take it very seriously, to the point of defying a chauvinistic society that often places women in more traditional, household-related roles. Argentine documentary Mujeres con pelotas (Goals for Girls: A Story of Women With Balls), directed by Ginger Gentile and Gabriel Balanovsky, focuses on a group of girls from the Villa 31 — a popular slum located right next to one of the city’s most affluent areas in Retiro — that strives hard, time and again, to make their own team and satisfy their need to play soccer, just like men do on a regular basis. Yet in the case of women, the road is covered in obstacles left and right: the boys won’t let them use the field they claim it’s theirs, their families oppose their playing because they consider soccer is a men’s sport, they are called tomboys and so they are discriminated against, they have no resources to meet the most basic expenses — and so forth. However, despite the many hardships, the girls from Villa 31 will struggle until the very end to fulfill a much-cherished dream: to take part in the Homeless World Cup in Brazil. The filmmakers intertwine many diverse testimonies from players, coaches, next of kin and friends, and this way a precise, multifaceted panorama of the universe of women’s soccer is drawn. Interviewees talk candidly and share their enthusiasm — or their rejection — and firmly defend their points of view. Nobody here stays in a middle ground. It seems you either strongly embrace or totally despise the idea of women playing soccer, which makes the film all the more attractive. Plus the amount of information and background exposed is also of much help to understand the many sides of the affair. After watching Mujeres con pelotas, which in Spanish translates literally as “women with balls,” you’ll realize that women do certainly have the balls to struggle for something that rightfully belongs to them. As a downside, and in tune with many recent local documentaries, Mujeres con pelotas renders a panorama, but doesn’t probe deep into any particular story. Not that it must, but bear in mind that these players have more than interesting personalities and idiosyncrasies, so going for a more detailed picture would have resulted in a more complex feature in dramatic terms. It would have been great to get to know the story of two or three girls from their childhood to today, and while there are some examples, the truth is that they are barely sketched. Since women are the protagonists, then allow them to be shown with their many nuances. Leaving that aside, Mujeres con pelotas is a skillfully shot documentary that scores big time when it comes to addressing a largely ignored theme that could use much more exposure.
Madam Baterflai is an ideologically defiant, rightfully non-conformist debut feature “First of all, I selected five persons of different ages and with different life stories so that I could tackle different issues. So there’s Mariana, who is rather innocent, untarnished and enjoys a healthy family life; then there’s Paloma, who, as a prostitute, represents that which is illegal and forbidden; Marcela, who represents the very construction of a woman: has many surgeries, and is an embodiment of human frailty; Joseph, who stands in for history itself as she survived the dictatorship and AIDS, now she’s a Buddhist, an actress and a dancer; and last but by no means least, there’s Carolina, the Madame, the butterfly, the only one who’s had a sex change operation... and the only one who’s a parent,” says Argentine filmmaker Carina Sama about the protagonists of her opera prima Madam Baterflai, a humanistic, poignant documentary about the life stories of four transvestites and a transsexual from the province of Mendoza who candidly speak up about how, against all odds, they proudly became who they are today. Unlike many documentaries with a socially conscious agenda, Madam Baterflai tells its multifaceted stories by addressing the many bonds missed and made, family liaisons and subjectivities. It’s not about statistics, laws, decrees, manifests of declarations of principles. Yet it is deeply political, ideologically defiant, and rightfully non-conformist. It’s not belligerent in the sense it doesn’t cry out for social acceptance, but instead it reflexively demonstrates that acceptance of diversity is the only possible way to go as to create a respected and respectable society for everybody. This doesn’t mean Madam Baterflai has been made to state the obvious, but rather to show that the obvious has been stated way too many times already. An unmistaken sense of deep honesty and immediacy is another major asset in Carina Sama’s debut film, which brings viewers closer to the protagonists with an emphatic attitude. We are not asked to cast judgment or to agree with everything that’s said, but rather to watch and listen carefully, and then draw our own conclusions. Of course, there’s a prominent discourse against discrimination and in favour of the freedom to be who you truly are, but said discourse comes out of the intimate, testimonies of Mariana, Marcela, Carolina, Paloma, and Joseph — and not out of philosophical thoughts or intellectual elaborations established beforehand. It’s the slices of their lives, their anecdotes, the things they had to go through, their real and ongoing struggle for acceptance that really makes the flesh and blood of the documentary. In other words: once you get to know the essentials of their lives, reality doesn’t get any more compelling. On the other hand, there’s a downside as regards film form. Given the richness of the material, a more in depth, detailed approach to some key aspects in the stories would have drawn out a more insightful picture. It’s a matter of organizing the narrative better, with a tighter sense of storytelling, so that it doesn’t involuntarily zigzag or becomes unnecessarily panoramic. This way, these stories would have stood out more than they do now. However, as it is, Madam Baterflai is both a touching experience and a valuable documentary in favor of much-needed visibility and the acceptance of gender diversity.
El día trajo la oscuridad: young female vampires in love “A seemingly simple plot becomes more complex in a way that allows viewers to feel the same strangeness that Virginia, the protagonist, is feeling. So viewers have to reinterpret all the signs that have so far appeared in the film. I thought it was interesting to begin by showing a “real” world with some very subtle interventions of the supernatural that, at first, would be explained through the eyes of science”, said Argentine filmmaker Martín Desalvo about his accomplished second outing, El día trajo la oscuridad, a modern, down-to-earth take on the realm of female vampires featured at last year’s BAFICI as well as Cannes Film Festival in the section Blood Window. And while female vampires surely are a central theme in horror cinema, it has almost never been explored in local cinema. Most importantly, the manner in which Desalvo examines this universe is as eerie as it is seductive, as atmospheric as it is surprising. And it’s fine genre filmmaking with an auteur imprint. But first, the storyline. Virginia (Mora Recalde) lives isolated in a huge country house. She’s the only child of Emilio (Luciano Suardi) the town’s doctor, who leaves the house to help his brother’s younger daughter, for she is dying of an unknown disease. In time, Emilio’s brother’s elder daughter Anabel (Romina Paula) arrives to the house feverish and feeling very weak. In fact, she looks and feels just like her sister. She sleeps during the day and stays awake at night. On top of it all, there’s a strange case of rabies plaguing the small town. But is it really rabies? One of Desalvo’s most commendable attributes is how realistically and believable the story is told. Don’t expect vampires with visible fangs, capes and gowns — for there are none. Instead, think of everyday young girls who, as they are alluringly drawn to one another, they gradually turn into night creatures in a slight, restrained manner. The acting is in the vein of naturalism, and so is the overall mise-en-scène. However, when it comes to the cinematography, the criterion is more of a surreal, very climatic nature — even more when it comes to exteriors. Sometimes you feel as though time had been suspended, and as if normal things and ordinary people were about to disappear anytime. When the supernatural enters the territory of the mundane, a strange chemistry is effortlessly achieved. On the other hand, El día trajo la oscuridad could have used a stronger dose of suspense, more tension in some very specific points of the story. Its languid pace does pay off as to ensure a dreamlike state, but it also backfires when it fails to accompany some twists and turns. Other than that, Desalvo’s feature is a healthy, refreshing surprise that makes a difference in the panorama of local horror cinema. That alone is quite praiseworthy.
A ventriloquist, a dummy, and a risky secret Juan (Carlos Belloso) is man in his early fifties that has certainly not found his calling. He is, in fact, a wannabe con artist at best. Deep down, he hopes to become a renowned artist, so he thinks of a somewhat effective scheme: he will be a ventriloquist and he will have the best dummies there are, with the kind of show that will blow the audience’s mind. He wants to be a regular star at the many theatres on the legendary Corrientes Avenue. But how is he going to do that? Well, the dummy is no dummy, to begin with. He is Mario (Tomás Pozzi), a young man like any other except for his diminutive height. His features don’t resemble those of a dwarf at all — he’s even kind of boyish looking. It’s his height, make-up, and dummy training that will hopefully do the trick. So Juan indeed becomes the ventriloquist and Juanito (Mario), the fake dummy. Together, they tour the province of Buenos Aires in an old bus painted in vivid colours, which is in fact their itinerant stage for their show. Soon enough, they meet Lucía (Emilia Attias), a gorgeous flamenco dancer they both fall in love with. She is not only beautiful — she’s also kind and caring. On the not so bright side, she keeps a secret regarding a love affair gone awry. There’s something in her past still haunting her; something that will prove to be dangerous not only for her, but also for Juan and Mario. Something that will surface only in the very end. Give or take, that’s a possible synopsis for Argentine filmmaker Becky Garello’s debut feature El secreto de Lucía, which portrays a small universe of somewhat bizarre beings, lonely souls in search of love and recognition, lovable losers with unexpected dark sides. As far as the characters go, El secreto de Lucía offers originality and the kind of tenderness you only find in films that care for antiheroes that have nothing to lose. Moreover, it’s a film with an atmosphere all of its own thanks to an expressive use of cinematography and enticing art direction. You can feel the characters’ moods and the feel of the places, as well as sense their pulse and see their many shades. So far, so good. However, there’s an unsolvable problem, and it’s the film’s genre, and its tone. Leaving aside the fact that the secret Lucía holds turns out to be not that interesting at all — and so her character immediately becomes less intriguing — the filmmaker has opted to tell this story in the vein of a rather realistic drama. But the offbeat nature of the characters and their universe would have been much better examined under the prism of sheer melodrama with hints of the grotesque. Exaggeration was the real key here. That was the way to go. Instead, when treated with the naturalism of a regular drama and with so much seriousness, the whole affair turns into little credible stuff. It feels forced and contrived and the fun and excitement wears thin too soon. El secreto de Lucía had good potential, but has been wrongly developed and conventionally executed. Too bad because the performances of the ventriloquist, the fake dummy, and the real beauty are as appealing as they are heart rendering.
Tango, shrinks and nutcases don’t mix well on screen Stereotypes can be lethal — especially when taken seriously. Otherwise, when it comes to a parody or a situation comedy, they do pay off quite nicely. They are part of the game, and rightfully so. But when a naturalistic drama that calls for fully fleshed out characters resorts to stereotypes, the result is frankly off-putting. Add an unnecessarily convoluted storyline with unnecessary touches of picturesque fare (tangos and milongas, more precisely), absolutely unsuccessful performances from an entire cast, big meanings voiced over by cardboard figures, and a rather ludicrous premise to begin with. What you get out of such deadly mix is Argentine directors Hernán Findling y Oliver Kolker’s opera prima Fermín, la película, a movie that’s hard to forget. It all begins when Dr. Ezequiel Kaufman (Gastón Pauls), a good and humanitarian shrink who starts working at a Public Psychiatric Hospital, meets a most peculiar patient, Fermín Turdera (Héctor Alterio), an old man who does not connect with anybody at all. Speech wise, all he can do is utter lyrics of tango and milongas tunes — and you sure can’t carry a conversation like that. His only relative is his caring granddaughter Eva Turdera (Antonella Costa), an attractive tango and milongas dance teacher with a pervasive bad mood and a distressing love affair with his dance companion. She wants grandpa to get better, but thinks it’ll never happen since he’s been committed for ten years with no improvement whatsoever. So doctors have given up on him. That is, of course, until Dr. Kaufman arrives. Kaufman becomes close to Fermín (thanks to two or three empathic conversations, but mostly because the script says so), and will gradually get to the roots of his trauma. Past events and episodes in the 1940’s and onwards (which you see in didactic flashbacks) speak of an ill fated romance and betraying your best friend, of the underworld of tango (rendered in very, very trite manner), of a disappeared son during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship (a gratuitous inclusion just to make the drama all the more “gripping”) and, among many other things, of the love a father never gave to his son. Incidentally, there’s also an absent father in Kaufman’s life, which triggers his devotion to cure Fermín, who in the end becomes a thankful father to the good doctor and thus relieves his aching hear too. I’m tempted to say that Fermín, la película’s main problem is that it is a drama and not a melodrama, the only genre that could have supported such plot. And yet that’s not entirely so. Because the huge flaws in acting (everybody either over acts or is stiff as a rock, and I mean every single actor), the way sluggish pace of the storytelling, the cartoonish and unrealistic depiction of the mental hospital (patients are the kind of funny, likable, or violent nuts you only see in bad movies), and the one dimensional characters are indeed enormous problems that no genre could have solved. There’s no way to make a decent film out of a horrendous screenplay and equally horrendous direction. Given this set of circumstances, a constant, overall lack of verisimilitude is completely assured. Needless to say, there’s no fun, no insights, no real feelings to be found here.
A scene from The Owners. By Pablo Suárez For the Herald Wouldn’t you like to enjoy the privileges of the “leisure class” instead of having to support it? This one of the main questions posed by the insightful, understated Argentine feature Los dueños (The Owners), by Agustín Toscano and Ezequiel Radusky, which had its promising world première at last year’s Critics’ Week of the Cannes Film Festival. And, yes, the workers in the film very much want to be bosses. Or, at least, pretend they are, if nothing else. It so happens that Rubén (Germán De Silva), his wife Alicia (Liliana Juárez), and their son Sergio (Sergio Pina) are the caretakers of a farming estate in the northern province of Tucumán. Each time the owners are away, they rush to occupy the main house to have a great time doing nothing except playing the ruling family. In this imitation of life, their reality matches their dreams. Too bad the owners are spoilsports and come back without previous notice — which sooner or later is bound to lead to trouble. Actually, things start to get cringe-worthy — and not only for the caretakers — right after the arrival of Pía (Rosario Bléfari), the elder sister of Lourdes (Cynthia Avellaneda). Lourdes is married to Gabriel (Daniel Elías), the son of the patriarch who owns the farming state. And since Gabriel is so incompetent at administrating the place, Pía is offered to take over, which she does with much enthusiasm. This way, no strangers are brought into the farm. The paradox lies in the fact that the family members are more treacherous than any outsider, as a series of unexpected episodes will soon come to prove. Be prepared for a reversal of fortune (and then yet another one) that will lay out a different scenario. Come to think of it, perhaps it’s not that different after all. Directors Toscano and Radusky come from the realm of theatre, and Los dueños is their first film together. However, there’s no theatricality here in either the performances or the mise-en-scene — even their plays had a strong cinematic imprint. So expect naturalism and no declamatory dialogue at all. Instead, there’s the kind of dialogue that hides the characters’ motivations in order to turn them into ambiguous, sometimes ambivalent, creatures. Understatement is one of the keys to the organic manner the story unfolds — even with its surprises. Lesser smart filmmakers would have probably gone for a black-and-white depiction of class struggle and class divide, but here the tensions and antagonisms, with their share of unfulfilled desires, are examined in a more oblique perspective with a healthy sense of humour that gives the characters a cartoonish edge that ironically makes them more human. There’s no direct violence, cheap exploitation, loathsome working conditions, coercions or abuse. It’s not pitting the poor against the rich. It’s about power dynamics within each group, and about the often mutable relationships these two groups establish. For the most part, conflicts are hidden, secrets carefully kept. And there are the alliances, which can (and cannot) vanish in a matter of seconds. For nobody here is too satisfied with anything. Never solemn or judgmental, Los dueños is an exploration rather than a demonstration, and that’s precisely why it’s all the more appealing. It’s as if Claude Chabrol’s The Ceremony meets Buñuel’s Viridiana, but with more than a touch of local flavour, and an original, personal viewpoint all along. It’s about people trapped within a social structure that can only make them desire something they don’t have, precisely because they don’t have it. Or perhaps they want what they have, but also want something else. That is, until they have it.
No One Lives: old school horror is back Before No One Lives, I’d only seen Japanese filmmaker Ryûhei Kitamura’s US debut film The Midnight Meat Train, an adaptation of a Clive Barker’s short story about a New York photographer who hunts down an unusual serial killer: a true butcher with a taste for crashing, disemboweling and slicing commuters on the last train home. Extremely violent and pretty dynamic, with eye-catching cinematography and some startling visuals, Kitamura’s outing delivers way more than what you’d expect from your average slasher-type gore fest as it increasingly crosses the good- taste line to superb effect. Granted, the screenplay is nothing short of thin, with its stereotypical characters, little interesting sub plots, and a predictable dramatic arc. Nonetheless, The Midnight Meat Train never ceases to be heavily ominous and disturbing — yet also viscerally amusing, at least for those with a strong stomach. So when I learned about Kitamura’s next film No One Lives, locally released on Thursday, I hoped for the best. Now that I’ve seen it a couple of times, I feel it’s one of the best slashers/thrillers of these latest years (albeit not as solid as Adam Wingard’s You’re Next). As could be expected, it maintains some of the qualities of The Midnight Meat Train, especially its dynamic tempo and abundance of gore, but also it sometimes sloppy narrative and plot holes. However, this time the emphasis is not so much on the ominous, but on the mayhem. For absolute excess rules here. The plot concerns a couple (Luke Evans and Laura Ramsey) driving accross the country as they head to their new home after a recent breakup over infidelity. But she’s forgiven him, so this is their chance to start over from scratch. To their disgrace, they stop at a diner where they meet a gang of criminals who, after having failed at robbing a wealthy family (whom they killed anyway) is in urgent need of cash. So it makes sense that they almost immediately kidnap, and then torture, the fine-looking couple. And just when they think their money problems were over, it’s precisely when they actually start. Big time. It so happens that their prisoners are not who they appear to be, not in the slightest. Now it’s clear they shouldn’t have messed with them in the first place. Better said, with him, who has no name and is referred to as Driver. What follows is a string of vicious (and creative) deaths depicted in full graphic splendour, ranging from someone stabbed with a sickle, a woman killing herself with the help of a knife, to a man thrown into a meat grinder, or someone’s face crushed against an engine fan in a car. Add a throat slashed by a clip board and a head blown off. And there’s more. So far, it sounds like standard, generic material, which actually it is. And yet there’s more to it. Some healthy novelties include a third story that took place in the past and puts everything under a new perspective — and we’re talking about a turn of the screw after the sudden twist that shows that looks can be deceiving. There’s also a perfectly organized sequence of minor and major episodes to make the deaths happen, and the fact that it is purposely contrived pushes the film away from the demands of realism, at the same time it takes place in a realistic territory. For No One Lives doesn’t attempt to be a classical, logically driven cat and mouse game movie. It doesn’t understimate its viewers when it asks them to believe the unbelievable. Just like the deaths in the Final Destination franchise are not meant to be credible, but enjoyed for their campy nature. Moreover, Driver is one scary psychopath, as sturdily played by Luke Evans. Despite his unnecessary solemnity to say many of his lines, he sounds gripping in a non naturalistic manner (and that’s what makes him so sinister). It’s as if you combine legendary serial killers such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Candyman, all of them of a supernatural origin and with supernatural attributes, with someone like Jigsaw, a human being with a wicked brain, infinite resources and a lust for revenge. And a killing machine like The Terminator. All kinds of evil into one. This way, you can never know what to expect, and neither can the characters. The frontiers have to be re delimitated, time and again, as the body count rises. On the minus side, the performances are downright mediocre, except for those of Luke Evans and Adeliade Clemmens as Emma, an heiress to a fortune who pops out in the story for reasons not to be revealed in order to avoid spoiling the surprise. And it wouldn’t have hurt to have written better dialogue. I don’t mean original dialogue, but not this trite either. Amid so many uninspired, gutless horror movies that recycle old formulas with no imagination, No One Lives proudly stands out as a ferocious homage to slashers, with a massive dose of gore, and not without a gruesome sense of humour.