Made on a six-million-euro budget, the Norwegian drama has stunning digital effects and mise en scene Points: 8 First of all, the wave is awesome. More to the point, it’s a tsunami created by a major rockslide which crashes into the fjord and produces a huge wall of water that wipes out almost an entire Norwegian mountain village. Among those trying to survive, there’s a family of four: a geologist working at a warning centre, his wife who’s a hotel employee, their average skateboarding teenage son, and a cute little girl. There are others, of course, most of which will die rather sooner than later. Once the cataclysm starts to take place, people will only have 10 freaking minutes to run to the highest possible area in the mountain. And to think the people in charge of keeping an eye on the mountain had had early signs of the mayhem to come —as usual. Roar Uthaug’s The Wave is Scandinavia’s first disaster movie, as well as last year’s submission for the Best Foreign Language film to the Academy Awards. It’s based on events that occurred decades ago and it draws a possible scenario for the years to come since experts agree that considering the number of shaky mountains in Norway, it’s just a matter of time until something like this takes place. Whether such assessment is true or not is of little importance, for what matters is that as you watch the film, you are likely to feel it can actually happen. Geiranger is the name of the fjord. Leading Norwegian actors Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp play Kristian Eikford and Idun —husband and wife —whereas Jonas Hoff Oftebro is Sondre, the teenage son, and Edith Haagenrud-Sande Julia, the young daughter. Though not fully fleshed out, their characters still are developed enough for a breathtaking thriller that adheres to the most common traits of the genre. And while it’s a cinch that J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, which focuses on the aftermath of the impact of a tsunami, will come to mind while watching The Wave, it’s equally true that both movies are different in some key aspects. The Impossible is a disaster movie in a melodramatic key almost from beginning to end. The Norwegian feature is more of a realistic drama, if you will. In this sense, it’s easier and way more disturbing to relate to the characters in The Wave. Broadly speaking, human tragedy works better when you feel close to recognizable individuals. The sequence where Kristian tries to make sense of the devastation left by the tsunami while he desperately searches for his daughter is particularly striking. And so are Idun’s efforts to find her son who’s somewhere in the hotel where she works, right before the immediate impact of the wave. Also, except for the impact of the tsunami, unlike in The Impossible, here gripping suspense takes the place of grand spectacle in most of the movie. But perhaps it takes too long in setting up the very moment of the disaster —a little over an hour seems too much. Even more so when you have some 40 minutes until the end for the entire struggle to try to survive to unfold. That’s the main reason why you may feel you’ve been somehow shortchanged. Which still doesn’t prevent the movie from being better than most Hollywood disaster movies, which almost solely rely on never-ending digital effects, which end up being sort of boring. The Wave was made on a budget of six million euros but it doesn’t show. You’d think more money was put into the film, all the more so when the digital effects and the overall mise en scene are so stunning. Yet these special effects are used strictly when needed and for a brief amount of time —e.g. when the tsunami slams into the village— from different points of view. Other than that, the rest is the somewhat strong human drama. On the minus side, towards the ending The Wave goes Hollywood, right when you’d think it would challenge viewers with a more unsettling ending. With more darkness, that is. This is a moderate disappointment because up to that very moment, Roar Uthaug’s movie could’ve strongly set itself apart from others of this type. That doesn’t mean it’s not very good entertainment. For sure, it is. Production notes The Wave (Bolgen, Norway, 2015). Directed by Roar Uthaug. Written by John Kare Raake, Harald Rosenlow Eeg. With Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Oftebro. Cinematographer: John Cristian Rosenlund. Production designer: Nina Nordqvist Music: Magnus Beite. Editor: Christian Siebenherz. Production company: Fantefilm Fiksjon. Running time: 105 minutes.
POINTS: 5 A loose adaptation from three short stories by Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro, Julieta, the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, tells the story of Julieta (first played by Adriana Ugarte in the character’s youngster years, then by Emma Suárez in her middle-age golden years) as she undergoes a typical, if subdued, melodrama: first she falls madly in love, then she has a child, and later as times goes by she faces the loss of almost everybody she loves most dearly. Julieta starts with a chance encounter. The title character is a fifty something woman who’s about to leave her fashionable apartment in Madrid to move to Portugal with her significant other Lorenzo (Argentine actor Darío Grandinetti). But as she’s walking across the city one day, she runs into her friend Beatriz, who tells Julieta that, the week before, she’d accidentally met Julieta’s daughter Antia at Lake Cuomo, a placid leisure spot where Antia was vacationing with her children. Bea says that that Antia knows her mum still is in Madrid, which makes Julieta feel visibly moved. Right away, she decides she won’t move to Portugal at all. What she does is actually quite different: she rents an apartment in the building where she raised Antia. And from then on, she’s determined to find her. Or perhaps Antia will look for her. Later on, we learn that Julieta hasn’t seen her daughter since Anita turned 18 and fled her home to go to a religious retreat in the mountains, never to come back. Julieta did everything in her power to find her — including hiring a private eye — but to no avail. With a broken heart, she decided it was best to forget her for good — that is, until her chance encounter with Beatriz brought everything back to the present. On the one hand, Julieta is a true improvement over Almódovar’s previous film, the too flimsy Los amantes pasajeros (“I’m So Excited”), which honestly is not saying much. On the other hand, it’s considerably inferior to the superb La piel que habito (“The Skin I Live In”). For that matter, Julieta is less accomplished than many others of his films — especially his early features. For starters, for being a melodrama, it’s perhaps too restrained. Though multiple events take place, oddly enough the narrative feels flat and never gripping. It’s as though it lacked even the minimum dramatic drive to keep the story flowing instead of dragging. Then, it’s not of much help that almost the entire main conflict, with its many detours, is conveyed through self-explanatory dialogue that sounds written rather than spoken. Scene after scene, you have to listen to every single actor explain what’s going on, what went on before, and what will happen next — that’s one of the reasons why Julieta’s voice-over is tedious, the other one being it’s sort of aloof. In the third place, there’s an almost continuous musical score that is meant to add some drama to the story and yet it fails to do so. In fact, it’s quite annoying. Some characters that should be important are barely developed — take Grandinetti’s Lorenzo or Rossy De Palma’s Marian — whereas others lack all possible ambiguity and nuances. On the plus side, Julieta as played by Emma Suárez is an achievement in many regards as this well-known Spanish actress brings some sentiment and a more visceral approach to the drama. Hadn’t it been for her, Julieta would have been hard to sit through. Almodóvar is a gifted filmmaker who has made many films where he showed a personal mark in both daring genre blending and an appealing set of aesthetics, which you don’t see at all in Julieta. It comes as an unpleasant surprise that it looks like a film made by a beginner with not much luck. Let’s hope Julieta is an occasional misstep. Production notes Julieta (Spain, 2016). Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, based on stories by Alice Munro. With Emma Suárez, Adriana Ugarte, Daniel Grao, Inma Cuesta, Dario Grandinetti, Pilar Castro, Rossy de Palma. Cinematography: Jean Claude Larrieu. Editing: Jose Salcedo. Running time: 96 minutes. @pablsuarez
POINTS: 5 Halfway into Claudio Remedi’s La ilusión de Noemí, one of its main characters, Sergio (Joaquín Remedi), a boy of 11 or 12, stands by his teacher, in front of his classmates, and has to answer a few questions about the daily homework. He obviously hasn’t studied and he hesitates and stutters, fails to come up with the right answers, is unfocused, and above all, he speaks in a languid voice that is slow to the point of inertness. Well, the same can be said about the film: it’s in urgent need to be infused with a good deal of rhythm, of vitality, of life. That, among many others, is the main problem here. Surely not intended, the narrative drags almost from the very point when things start unravelling. Not that the storyline is that appealing either, for it lacks an original insight, it has one dimensional characters, and is too thin in its scope. Then again, had it been properly executed with gripping performances, a couple of insights, a good dose of subtlety and a strong dramatic focus, then the result would’ve been different and for the better. Noemí (Martina Horak) and Sergio are classmates and friends who spend lots of time together. Noemí’s mom died when she was very young and she lives with her dad (Sergio Boris) and her strict and boring aunt (María Inés Aldaburu) while Sergio lives with his mum (Licia Tizziani), who’s separated from her ex-husband and is having a hard time finding a job. La ilusión de Noemí focuses — or attempts to focus — on the friendship between the two tweens, yet it doesn’t reveal much about it. It just scratches the surface of a bond that’s never fully developed. For that matter, the same goes for the conflicts, so to speak, that their parents are involved in along the film. Noemí and Sergio play in the garden of Noemí’s house and they like to dig. God only knows why, perhaps because they are kids and kids are supposed to like digging. Or more likely because the script says so. In any case, they eventually find a rusty old box (more than halfway into the film) and they wonder what it may be and who it may belong to. Could it be related to Noemí’s mum? Don’t blame the young actors for their deadpan, lifeless performances; the adults are just as inexpressive. In fact, you can see the actors sort of trying to do their best, but they can only do so much when there’s no coaching. They are as unenergetic as the film itself. Yet there’s one visible asset, pun intended: to a certain extent, the cinematography by Lucas Martelli does have flair. Quite a few shots are well composed, well-framed, and boast certain appeal in the use of tones and textures. In this regard, a small yet somewhat personal world is portrayed. Which, in a sense, makes the movie-watching experience more digestible. And the art direction by Gabriela Crespo is not devoid of some findings either. Production notes La ilusión de Noemí (Argentina, 2015). Written and directed by Claudio Remedi. With Martina Horak, Joaquín Remedi, Licia Tizziani, Sergio Boris, María Inés Aldaburu, Lucrecia Plat. Cinematography: Lucas Martelli. Editing: Claudio Remedi, Gabriela Jaime. Art direction: Gabriela Crespo. Produced by Boedo Films. Running time: 94 minutes. @pablsuarez
Far from being a agitprop piece, Rara is a film that doesn’t go for shock value In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against Chile for having violated several principles of the Inter-American Convention of Human Rights by removing three children from the custody of their mother, Judge Karen Atala, in 2004, just because she was a lesbian. And in December of the same year, the Chilean government restored the judge’s parental rights and mandated financial compensation and therapy for the children. The lawsuit had been originally filed by the father of the three girls, Jaime López, who considered that Atala’s sexual orientation as well as her cohabitation with Emma de Ramón could be harmful for the normal development of the girls. A Chilean-Argentine co-production, Rara (“Strange”) is a smart, insightful film directed by Pepa San Martín and co-written with Alicia Scherson, which is based on the real-life case of discrimination against Atala. It’s not a strict account of what actually happened, but a fictional recreation that bears strong similarities while weaving its own story of prejudice and unfairness towards LGBTIQ people in a heteronormative society. Rara won the Best Film award in the Generation Kplus sidebar at the Berlinale, and Pepa San Martín is also a former Berlin short film award winner. In Rara, Paula (Mariana Loyola) is separated from her ex-husband, Victor (Daniel Muñoz), and now lives with Lia (Agustina Muñoz), together with her children, Sara (Julia Lübbert) and Catalina (Emilia Ossandon). At first sight, you’d think that everything is just fine: Victor and his girlfriend Nicole (Sigrid Alegría) even visit his ex-wife and kids and spend some quality time together. Or so it seems. However, things change when Catalina naively draws her all-female family at school and it it’s not well received: the principal calls the mother to explain what that drawing is all about. So it’s not surprising that the lesbian couple try to keep their relationship in low profile. And in due time, Víctor will turn out to be not such an understanding person. Even when to the girls everything feels absolutely natural and harmless, many of those outside the family think differently. And, of course, every now and then their hostility becomes apparent. Narrated from the point of view of Sara, Rara first focuses on her main petty worries: she’s just had her braces removed so that’s to be celebrated, she likes one of her classmates, Julián, and sooner or later she will let him know that. She’s also about to turn 13, so a birthday party is on the way. Actually, Sara’s best friend is the one planning the party. Needless to say, the friend also thinks the life Sara leads at home is perfectly natural. She dares say she’d rather kiss a girl than an ugly boy. The first remarkable asset you see in Rara are the performances — and I mean all of them — though it’s only fair to point out that Julia Lübbert stands out as Sara. Not only because she’s the one with more screen time (she’s practically in every single scene) but also because she knows how to effortlessly convey an undercurrent of slight despair and moderate concern that at times seems to well in her. She’s the one most affected by the whole situation and the one who doesn’t have that many emotional resources to deal with everything. Catalina is more oblivious to what others think, and so the young Emilia Ossandon builds a more happy-go-lucky character that’s often too busy with a kitten she’s found that neither of her parents want her to keep. As for the two mums, Mariana Loyola and Agustina Muñoz have enough chemistry and their couple’s dynamics are as believable as they are engaging. In short: you really have a family here. Then there’s the tone: Rara could’ve been a melodrama, an agitprop piece, or a belligerent cry for justice and acceptance — which wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. However, Pepa San Martín opts to be non-strident (which doesn’t mean she’s not combative), seldom overstates her ideas, doesn’t care for shock value, and so a welcoming sense of realism is naturally achieved. And that’s a hard thing to get right, so it’s all the more commendable. It’s true that Rara is a film that wants to convey its intentions in the clearest of ways. At times, it can get a bit didactic. But considering today’s context regarding same-sex couples and alternative families, being didactic is hardly a real problem. Because, at the same time and for the most part, the film cares deeply about the hardships and joys of the characters, their everyday life as it comes, how they cope with life at large, and leaves its political agenda aside. In short: it’s a film about people like everybody else who make the best of what they have and who they are. production notes Rara (Chile, Argentina, 2016). Directed by Pepa San Martín. Written by Alicia Scherson, Pepa San Martín. With Julia Lübbert, Mariana Loyola, Agustina Muñoz, Emilia Ossandón, Daniel Muñoz, Sigrid Alegría, Coca Guazzini. Editing: Soledad Salfate. Cinematography: Enrique Stindt. Running time: 90 minutes. @pablsuarezd
POINTS: 4 Woody Allen once said that there’s nothing worse for a comedy actor than acting funny — and he doesn’t mean funny as in odd, but as in comical. The same truism can be applied to the genre: there’s nothing worse for a comedy than striving hard to be funny. Comedy only occurs as a result of a well-constructed set of factors, let’s say, causes and effects, which were not necessarily meant to be funny in the first place. So the fun is an effect, if you will. And that’s exactly what the romantic comedy Alma gets all wrong. But let’s get to the story first. An Argentine/Chilean co-production directed by Diego Rougier, Alma follows Fernando (Fernando Larraín), a dumb-looking, dull supermarket cashier married to Alma (Javiera Contador), a young, perky bipolar woman who can be quite charming yet also a pain in the neck. They’ve been together ever since their teen years, and while Alma still is madly in love, Fernando is sort of bored with her and fed up with her personality disorder. When she realizes he’s disenchanted, she immediately dumps him, kicks him off their home, gets off her meds, and embarks into a new single life. Eventually, Alma will meet a good-looking Argentine man (Nicolás Cabré), apparently her new soul mate, and an affair will begin to blossom. Of course that’s when Fernando understands that Alma is the love of his life, so he’ll do whatever it takes to win her back. But in the meantime he’ll enjoy some single life experiences of his own. Guess what happens in the end. Despite its highly formulaic nature, the huge problem in Alma is not that it’s predictable. That’s seldom a problem per se, least of all in romantic comedies. The trouble is, filmmaker Diego Rougier struggles too hard to infuse the film with supposedly hilarious moments left and right, all the actors act as funny as they can to the point of ludicrously overacting, each visual or verbal gag is spelled out, all the characters are roughly sketched out, comic timing is off-cue, and every single notion is absolutely derivative of Hollywood romantic comedies, but in the worst possible way. To top it all off, the lack of chemistry between the two leading actors is frankly off-putting. As for Cabré, let’s say he’s a special guest star. Of course, his character does serve a purpose in the script, but that’s as far as it goes. He has little screen time and never reaches the status of a fleshed-out individual. So you can’t blame him for his acting. And don’t get me started on the moronic jokes based on Alma’s bipolarity. I mean, bipolars don’t start dancing like crazy in manic states just because they drink alcohol at a party. That’s just too dumb. And they don’t fill walls with post-it notes reminding themselves of every single thing they have to do for the rest of their lives. They don’t suffer from amnesia. And the idea of having Alma get off her meds so that she can be funny is just not funny. One more thing: there are a couple of, let’s say, sub-plots, which have no weight whatsoever in the picture. For that matter, the whole thing is weightless. production notes Alma (Argentina, Chile, 2015) Directed by Diego Rougier. Written by Diego Rougier, Rodrigo Vergara Tample. With Javiera Contador, Fernando Larraín, Nicolás Cabré. Cinematography: Antonio Quercia. Sound: Fernando Soldevila. Music: Camilo Salinas, Pablo Ilabaca. Running time: 97 min. @pablsuarez
El eslabón podrido is a politically incorrect film, blending horror, drama and black comedy POINTS: 7 Set in an Argentine hamlet in the middle of nowhere, El eslabón podrido (The Rotten Link), directed by Javier Valentín Diment, tells the story of Roberta (Paula Brasca), an attractive young girl who works as a prostitute in the local brothel/bar, Raulo (Luis Ziembrowski), an adult man with moderate mental retardation, and their mom, Ercilia (Marilú Marini), a somewhat senile witch-doctor of sorts who keeps warning her daughter against having sex with every man in town. For if she does, she will be no longer be of any use to the villagers — and that will get her killed. Of course, such a curse is not to be taken lightly, although there’s no proof whatsoever that it could actually happen. Nonetheless, there’s an overall feeling of impending doom in the village since there’s only one man left Roberta hasn’t had sex with. And this one man, Sicilio (Germán de Silva) doesn’t want to be left out. If she doesn’t agree to have sex with him for money — just like she does with all the other patrons of the hamlet’s seedy bar — then he’ll have to force her, because that’s how Sicilio’s sick mind works. Winner of the Audience Award at Sitges and the Best Film Award at Fantaspoa and FANT Bilbao, El eslabón podrido is an improvement over Diment’s previous feature, the uneven yet somewhat inventive horror flick La memoria del muerto, which had some important assets regarding visuals and production design, but was often flawed in the narrative. This time, with El eslabón podrido, the filmmaker doesn’t go for a horror film in strict terms — that is until the very ending when uncontrolled rage gives way to a splendid display of bloody carnage and over-the-top gore, which is very uncommon in local cinema. Stylish and with a heavy dose of dark humour, Diment’s politically incorrect feature first takes a somewhat grotesque edge that turns preposterous at times or downright painfully realistic. There’s also plenty of melodrama, black comedy, sheer drama, horror, and exploitation. For the most part, it all blends in smoothly and doesn’t feel contrived. What I found most attractive is the amusingly impertinent, tongue-in-cheek attitude that makes El eslabón podrido a guilty pleasure. Though slightly uneven in the actor’s performances — some of them are right on cue, such as that of Marilú Marini, Luis Ziembrowski, and Paula Brasca, yet others sometimes seem to inhabit a different movie — with some characters that are not developed at all (e.g. the one played by Lola Berthet) and with a few missteps in keeping a homogeneous tone, Diment’s new opus is still not devoid of formal achievements, starting with its flawless, moody cinematography by Fernando Marticorena, which sets the right atmosphere from the very beginning. Browns, yellows, sepias, and greens make up a textured canvas that creates a mystic all of its own, a bucolic environment that harbours some kinky affairs. The spotless production design is also to be celebrated. With a small budget and few sets and props, Sandra Iurcovich manages to create a village you are surely not familiar with. A hamlet that not only seems the ideal place for secrets and lies, but also for revenge should anyone mess with Ercilia or her offspring. production notes El eslabón podrido (Argentina, 2015). Directed and produced by Valentín Javier Diment. Written by Valentín Javier Diment, Sebastián Cortés, Martín Blousson, with the collaboration of Germán Val. With Luis Ziembrowski, Marilú Marini, Paula Brasca, Germán de Silva, Susana Pampín, Marta Haller, Valentín Javier Diment, Luis Aranosky, Lola Berthet, Sergio Boris. Cinematography: Fernando Marticorena. Art direction: Sandra Iurcovich. Editing: Martín Blousson. Running time: 74 minutes.
Points: 7 Italian filmmaker Antonio Capuano’s Bagnoli Jungle is a rare bird within the contemporary panorama of Italian filmmaking. It’s by definition a fiction film, yet it incorporates many aspects of real everyday life in a documentary-like manner. And in so doing, it continually blurs the line that separates facts from fiction. Story-wise, it focuses mostly on three individuals: Giggino, Antonio, and Marco, all of them living in the working-class neighbourhood of Bagnoli, in Naples, Italy. Giggino is a 50-year-old grumpy man, an uninspired poet who recites his verses in bars and restaurants. He is, too, an occasional thief who takes small items such as cell phones and wallets from glove compartments in cars parked on the street. He lives alone in a shabby room at a boarding house and doesn’t seem to have any friends. Antonio, his father, is 80 and lives in an average-looking apartment. He’s a retired worker of the Italsider factory, now abandoned and fallen to pieces. He can’t help but remember the good old days when his work meant so much to him. But despite today’s less than happy circumstances, he’s found a way to have some enjoyment and earn a bit of money as well: he’s a storyteller of no less than Diego Maradona’s most famous anecdotes when he played for Napoli. Unlike Giggino, who’s all by himself, Antonio gets help with daily chores from a Ukrainian maid. She is, in fact, an engineer who was unemployed back home and so came to Italy looking for work in her field — which she obviously never found. And finally there’s Marco, a free spirited good-looking 18-year-old young man who works as an underpaid salesman and a grocery delivery boy. Which he hates. He feels his life is elsewhere, but he has no clue where. One thing is for sure: it’s far from the everyday hardships of the jungle of Bagnoli — as everybody calls it. These men represent three different generations whose lives sporadically intertwine. In different ways, the three generations are affected by disillusionment, loss of expectations, and an unsatisfying present. Ill-conceived political, social and economic transitions have left thousands in a very unstable situation, with little to hope for. Capuano manages to expose such a grim reality with both empathy and concern for his characters. It is through the lives of these three men that Capuano addresses the conflicts endured by many of his fellow countrymen. In so doing, he casts his own melancholic meditation on an aching state of things. Largely shot with a hand-held camera, with just the already available light in locations and settings, briskly edited, and spoken in very colloquial dialogue, Bagnoli Jungle achieves a high degree of gritty realism even in the least unexpected of places. At the same time, sound effects are used for narrative purposes, adding an extra dimension to what images already convey. It’s an interesting mix, to say the least. Also, street artists, painters, salesmen, migrant workers, rappers, and students mingle at large in the many parts of the neighbourhood. Here again, the fictional stories blend in with these real life scenes. You may wonder how much of what you see on screen is actually scripted and to what degree. But that’s not the issue here. Instead, what does matter is the impression of reality viewers have. In this sense, Bagnoli Jungle feels very credible from beginning to end. What you see is what you get. Production notes Bagnoli Jungle (Italy, 2015) Written and directed by Antonio Capuano. With Antonio Casagrande, Marco Grieco, Luigi Attrice, Angela Pagano, Gea Martire, Olena Kravstskova. Cinematography: Antonio Capuano. Editing: Diego Liguori. Running time: 100 minutes. @pablsuarez
POINTS: 4 Once upon a time, Australian filmmaker Jocelyn Moorhouse made a more than promising debut film, Proof (1991), the story of a blind photographer whose life is looked after by his housekeeper until a third party enters the scenario: a young restaurant worker eventually becomes his best friend. Each character deals with their own trust issues while they try —and often fail— to connect emotionally. Even with its minor flaws, Proof was somewhat of a small gem. And it starred a very young and slim Russell Crowe, alongside Hugo Weaving (one of the queens in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) Then Moorhouse made two US outings that despite her best intentions and the good performances of the talented actresses featured, ended up being nothing to write home about: How to Make an American Quilt (1995), with Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Wynona Ryder, and Jean Simmons; and A Thousand Acres (1997), with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange. Now, after an 18-year hiatus, she’s made The Dressmaker, based on the novel by Rosalie Ham, set in Australia, and starring Kate Winslet and Judy Davis. And what a lame comeback it is. Sure enough, Moorhouse has a knack for getting renowned performers for her films, but unfortunately she can’t pull off a decent movie with them. Oddly enough, Proof had no big names and was made on a shoestring budget. The Dressmaker tells the story of Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Winslet), a ‘50s glamorous haute couture dressmaker who returns to Dungatar, her outback home town in Australia. She was kicked off from home when she was 10 for allegedly killing a classmate who constantly bullied her. Tilly apparently suffers from amnesia, so she can’t remember how the kid actually died, yet she feels she didn’t murder him and so for some unknown reason, she’d been framed. So she now wants to exact fierce revenge upon those who harmed her. She also wants to have a long-awaited reunion with her crazy old mom, Molly (Judy Davis), who’s got all sort of problems, beginning with the fact she doesn’t remember Tilly is her daughter— or so she says. With her sewing machine and haute couture style she learned in Paris, Tilly walks around town dressed as a star and gets the local women to be her clients by promising them she’ll make them look as gorgeous and classy as they come. Which she actually does. And yet not everybody will be pleased with the presence of this knock out of a woman who used to be a neglected child of a slutty mother. As The Dressmaker unfolds, it runs into all sorts of narrative problems, beginning with an ill-conceived genre-crossbreeding that turns it, time and again, into a sit-com, then a romantic comedy, then a drama, then back to romance only to be followed by screwball comedy, that is until the crime story takes over, and every now and then the grotesque rules. In the third act, expect drama and more drama, even with a realistic tint that had been absent from almost the entire film. Imagine all of this at once. Yes, it’s not a pretty sight. It’s not that such tonal shifts can’t ever be successful for there are some directors who are actually pretty good pulling such a difficult trick. Trouble is that Moorhouse is surely not one of them. For in The Dressmaker the tonal shifts are too blunt and too abrupt. Even each genre in itself is unnecessarily overstated to the point of being caricaturesque. To toy with clichés can be fun when it’s done as a parody, but the way clichés are used here make you feel you’re watching a parody of a parody. And I’m sure this is not intended. Plus there are many inconsistencies in the very logic of the film m, e.g. how does being a haute couture dressmaker in a God-forgotten rural town fit into a plan of revenge? Because you never see that transforming the women results into anything significant at all for the revenge. Lilly could’ve simply gone back and executed her revenge without even having made a single new dress. And there are quite a few inconsistencies like this one along the entire film —like why is the love story between Lilly and the local hunk (played by the always stunning Liam Hallstrom) even necessary in the story at all? Halfway into the film, there are already so many half-cooked subplots that you wonder how the script is going to intertwine them seamlessly and eventually tie them up together in a gripping manner. Well, it never does any of the two things. So by the end, you have a mess of a film that never reached its peak. By the way, the performances of Kate Winslet and Judy Davis are just fine for the most part —even if Davis is over the top too often. But they never truly excel. Blame it on Moorhouse, not on the actresses. Production notes: The Dressmaker (Australia, 2015). Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. Written by Jocelyn Moorhouse, P.J. Hogan (based on the novel by Rosalie Ham). With Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Julia Blake, Shane Bourne, Kerry Fox, Rebecca Gibney, Caroline Goodall. Director of photography: Donald M. McAlpine. Production designer: Roger Ford. Editor: Jill Bilcock. Costume designer: Marion Boyce. Production companies: Apollo Media, Film Art Media, Screen Australia. Running times: 118 minutes @pablsuarez
Argentine filmmaker Eduardo Crespo’s debut feature Tan cerca como pueda (“As Close as Possible”), which was released a couple of years ago, took a close-up look at the everyday of a common man in his 50s who returns to his hometown of Crespo, in the province of Entre Ríos, after many failures and disappointments. But instead of telling a story in its most classical sense, Tan cerca como pueda was an observational and meditative work on the circumstances surrounding the man’s return to Crespo. Now Crespo has released his sophomore film, called no less than Crespo (La continuidad de la memoria / “Crespo, the Persistence of Memory”), which previously ran in the Argentine competition of this year’s BAFICI. Like Tan cerca como pueda, Crespo’s new film is also a reflexive, solemn film essay which occasionally strikes subtle emotional chords and focuses more on observing at it all than developing a strong dramatic structure. Nominally, it’s about a trip that the filmmaker takes, once again, to his hometown of Crespo, following his father’s death, which occurred while making a film with and about him. In the broadest terms, Crespo is appealing as a very personal take on the unconscious and conscious ways memory works, it’s about the remembrance of things past while also being a son’s attempt to understand and symbolically communicate with his departed father. It’s as a narrative experience to emotionally rescue a loved one, resorting to a recollection of some of ersonal belongings of the director’s father — such as his books — and in doing so, subjective and elusive portrayal is built. But that’s not all: the film also smoothly explores the history of the family, the city, and its inhabitants. In this way, Crespo searches not only within individual memory, but also in collective one, intertwining both in seamless layers. Narrated through the filmmaker’s voice-over, which is somewhat melancholic and nostalgic, this son’s evocation of his father is quietly seductive and intimate. For a personal road movie of sorts, Crespo (La continuidad de la memoria) is a more original film than Tan cerca como pueda, and it partly transcends narrative and aesthetic boundaries. It’s also leisurely edited, which sometimes makes the film drag a bit, whether deliberately or not. But one thing is for sure: this auteur is not interested in following predetermined blueprints and so his search for meaning in a first person singular work that is to be acknowledged and valued. When and where MALBA (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415). Saturdays at 8 pm. Production notes Crespo (La continuidad de la memoria, Argentina, 2016) Directed by Eduardo Crespo. Written by Eduardo Crespo, Santiago Loza, Ariel Gurevich. Editing by Lorena Moriconi Cinematography: Eduardo Crespo. Running time: 65 minutes.
Late auteur Raúl Ruiz’s swan song is a fitting magisterial and elegiac meditation on love and death POINTS: 10 The mastery of the grand art of storytelling featuring winding tales within tales, mischievously shifting viewpoints, inventively unforeseen digressions, melancholic remembrances and elaborate characters is — among so many other things — what makes Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) such an absorbing period piece. But, of course, you could already guess that, if you’ve seen Time Regained (1999), an impressive adaptation of Marcel Proust’s writings, or Trois vies et une seule mort (1996), in which Marcello Mastroianni plays three leads at once. Late Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (or Raoul Ruiz), who lived in France and died in 2011, was the epitome of narrative sophistication and stylish visuals. With some 119 features under his belt (including short films and documentaries), Ruiz contributed to the art of filmmaking in a manner not many directors are even able to imagine. Love, betrayal, pain, loss, and more than anything else, death, are over and over again articulated by utter fate in Mysteries of Lisbon, which is adapted from the three-volume novel of the same name by prolific Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco (1825-1890). “These characters are victims, perfect examples of the social mobility of the Romantic century that invented the aesthetics of suicide and the copyright, the cult to cemeteries and ruins and the revolution of free thinking. The happenings and occurrences enter and exit the narrative as they get tangled into their own labyrinth. And the storm of misfortunes is never followed by a ray of light,” said Ruiz about one of the traits of the source material he found most appealing. Produced by Paulo Branco, partly financed with French money and set mainly in 19th century Portugal — though it eventually shifts to Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil — Mysteries of Lisbon was specifically made for European television. At the beginning of his career, Ruiz had made several TV dramas, and Castelo Branco’s novel was a very dear project to him. Originally, it was divided into six one-hour episodes, but it has been edited to 4hs 26min — which, by the way, run incredibly fast — and is now being commercially released in Buenos Aires thanks to the efforts of Argentine filmmaker Daniel Rosenfeld. The first of many voice-over narrators of this one-of-a-kind saga is Joao (Joao Luis Arrais), who remembers the gloomy times he lived with priests in a Lisbon orphanage and boarding school when he was 14. He never knew who his parents were, but in time he slowly becomes aware of his past. His story is then intertwined with that of the kind Father Dinis (Adriano Luz), a man who’s in part responsible for the orphan boy’s upbringing and, even more importantly, who will make possible for Joao to finally meet his mother, Angela (Maria Joao Bastos), the Countess of Santa Barbara, who is controlled and mistreated by her dominant husband (Albano Jeronimo). Joao is an illegitimate son of the countess and a poor nobleman with whom she had a heated affair which ended tragically when the man was shot by the hired gunmen of the Marquis of Montezelos (Rui Morrison), who then forced Angela into a convent. In turn, the marquis will hire a gypsy called the Knife-Eater (Ricardo Pereira) to kill Angela’s baby upon birth, but then the Knife-Eater is paid off by Father Dinis and, of course, Joao survives infancy. And then there are the stories of the assassin’s wife, his vindictive former mistress seeking vengeance for the death of her twin brother, an altogether different mistress who murders a bishop with whom she had three daughters. And in this same vein there are many, many other major and minor episodes that surface surprisingly and take place in switching-viewpoints spirals. These and other characters fade in and out of the many interwoven stories that will only be tied together at the very end — as though you were living inside the classiest of soap operas. In its visual design and cinematography, Mysteries of Lisbon is outlandishly gorgeous. Expect mesmerizing and refined compositions where framing as well foreground and background acquire new meanings, photographic effects that create a surreal atmosphere, smooth dolly shots and pans that encompass the heart of the drama as they immerse viewers into it, long takes that trap the flow of time in an everlasting present, and a lush palette that changes from welcoming warm tones to cold ones as the sentimental and psychological tribulations blow over a dozen characters on the verge of impending breakdowns. Don’t expect to be able to follow the narrative and never miss a why, who, what or when. It’s not intended that way. Even if you have the sharpest of memories, you’ll still get confused from time to time. But you should welcome this confusion. As many of Ruiz’s works — even considering this one being far more accessible than many others — you are meant to experience the movie instead of clinically dissecting it. Production notes Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). Directed by Raúl Ruiz. Screenwriter: Carlos Saboga, based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. With Joao Baptista, Jose Afonso Pimentel, Adriano Luz, Maria Joao Bastos, Albano Jeronimo, Filipe Vargas, Clotilde Hesme, Lea Seydoux. Produced by Paulo Branco. Photography: Andre Szankowski. Running time: 266 minutes.