Set in an arid landscape, El prisionero irlandés has an ably austere mise en scene, and yet...
“Towards 1810, the population in the province of San Luis reached 16,000 people. After the end of the wars for independence, only 4,000 were left. Half of them were women,” you can read in white type against a black background at the ending of the recently released Argentine feature El prisionero irlandés, written and directed by Carlos María Jaureguialzo and Marcela Silva y Nasute.
Set in the arid landscape of San Luis in 1806, right after the first British invasions, this is the story of one of those afflicted women, Luisa (Alexia Moyano), a young widow with a child and an old gaucho as her only companions, the one El prisionero irlandés (The Irish Prisoner) referenced in the title.
Better said, it’s about a melodramatic love story between Luisa and Conor (Tom Harris), an Irish prisoner assigned to live in Luisa’s small, shabby ranch, in order to help her with the daily chores. At first, Luisa and Conor do not bond, they just establish a peaceful, yet distant, relationship. But as years go by (yes, years) sentiments will surface and break through all possible barriers.
A few minutes into the film, you can already see that the production values are good enough for the story to ring true: the art direction is subtly convincing in all its details, costumes and make up do give you the right feeling of the time, the sound design does express the solitude and occasional hazards of such an isolated place, and the cinematography is not only technically correct but also seldom overstated. With an ably austere mise en scene, El prisionero irlandés looks and sounds pretty much as it should.
However, the problems lie in a more conflictive area — no less than the screenplay. For there’s little originality in how this love story between this Irish prisoner and this pretty young widow unfolds. The filmmaker’s approach is formulaic down to the very roots and yet the film pretends to be a personal work. But just pay attention to the overwhelming use of incidental music (there’s a guitar still playing in my ears) which stresses what images have already shown and expressed. And the same goes for the traits the characters have — you know, the old affable gaucho with a husky voice, the defiant and virtuous widow, the shy and harmless prisoner, and so forth.
At the same time, even if it may sound contradictory, the characters’ dramatic arc needs more transitions to make the changes in their behaviour believable.
I guess that’s why you get the feeling you are seeing a string of postcards, each of them with enthralling landscapes in the background and characters uttering overworked dialogue in the foreground.
So this involuntary use of clichés cannot but take away all the potentially genuine layers this story had. And the end result is a déjà vu period piece.
Production notes
El prisionero irlandés. Argentina, 2015. Written and directed by: Carlos María Jaureguialzo and Marcela Silva y Nasute. With: Alexia Moyano, Tom Harris, Manuel Vicente, Alberto Benegas, Juan Grandinetti, Kevin Schiele, Tomás Stadler, Yoska Lázaro, Sean Mckeown. Cinematography by: Federico Gómez. Sound by: Javier Stavrópulos. Editing by: Delfina Jaureguialzo. Produced by: Tres Pájaros Films. Running time: 103 minutes.
