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.
