Director Gustavo Fontán navigates the complexities of an intricate literary style
POINTS: 8
“An adaptation is always a task that involves many tensions. One appropriates something to think it over in a different manner, to resignify it,” stated Argentine filmmaker Gustavo Fontán about his new film El limonero real, based on Juan José Saer’s novel of the same name, in an interview to film critic Diego Brodersen in Página 12. In addition, El limonero real is the third installment in the Trilogy of the river, which started with La orilla que se abisma (2008) and then El rostro (2014), two emblematic, most accomplished works in the oeuvre of one of Argentina’s most personal auteurs.
To a large degree, the storyline of the film is the same as the plot of the novel. So this is Fontán’s first wise decision: not to introduce any significant changes for they are not necessary. We are then dealing with a family that lives on the riverbanks of the Paraná River, in the province of Santa Fe, which gathers to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They’re three sisters with their husbands and children living in three ranches in the wilds, in a very calm milieu.
Wenceslao (Germán de Silva) attempts, time and again, to get his wife (who’s referred to as “she” and is played by Patricia Sánchez) to attend the celebration. But she won’t. And she has a reason: she’s mourning the death of their young and only son. But this tragic event happened no less than six years ago. Her sisters and nieces try to convince her too, but to no avail. She’s mourning, she’s been mourning for a long time, she will go on mourning. And that’s that.
So if to adapt a novel into a film is to resignify it, that should mean to come up with something new. But certainly not with something that totally belies the novel. It’s common sense that the film should then preserve something, or a lot, of the source material. And Fontán faces a difficult job because Saer’s novel is considered to be impossible to be filmed because of its intricate literary style.
Consider that the carefully articulated prose is highly descriptive to the tiniest of details, there are utterly long paragraphs with seemingly endless sentences that provide a unique sense of atmosphere, narrators and tenses switch and sometimes overlap, and there are also sudden interior monologues, which added to all the above create a very complex narrative. How do you film that?
Here comes Fontán’s second wise decision: to try to capture and convey what’s usually referred to as the soul, the guts, the heart of the novel. And not to do it literally. Here you have the grief and the mourning, always unspeakable, unfathomable, and unfinished. And instead of going for cinematic experimental stylistic flourishes, Fontán chooses to film the scenario, meaning the people and the surroundings, in quite a realistic manner, yet with a profound poetic edge.
By creating an enthralling atmosphere thanks to a pristine cinematography and the resonance of eloquent ambient sound, the beautiful melancholy of nature is smoothly brought to the fore. The everlasting river, the light reflections, the shades and nuances of wilds, the slow passage of time, all of it acquire an existence of their own. They are characters as important as the people themselves.
In terms of the drama, there’s the aching impossibility of closure. A dead son, an absence, takes centre stage at all times and so is more alive than all existing beings. A wife and mother who’s not dead, but at the same time she refuses to live. A sad, moribund state of things that feels it will last forever.
“Feel” is the key word here, for Fontán’s movies are first and foremost about feelings, sentiments and emotions. Then, on a second instance, comes the understanding and elaboration of what is felt. For nothing is prosaic in this universe. Even the everyday — or precisely the everyday — is always startlingly lyrical, without a single mannerism and with enormous emotional truth.
Production notes:
El limonero real (Argentina, 2016). Written and directed by Gustavo Fontán. With Germán de Silva, Patricia Sánchez, Rosendo Ruiz, Eva Bianco, Gastón Ceballos, Rocío Acosta. Cinematography: Diego Poleri. Sound: Abel Tortorelli. Editing: Mario Bocchicchio. Running time: 77 minutes.
@pablsuarez
