“It’s a story of love, death and how to keep on living”, says celebrated Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso about Jauja, his new film, an international co-production that won the FIPRESCI award at Cannes and recently opened the international competition of the Mar del Plata Film Festival. To Vigo Mortensen, the star of the film, also a producer and creator of the musical score, Jauja is no less than “an Argentine-Danish existential Western.” The truth is that Jauja can be many things to many people, all of them somewhat ungraspable and hard to summarize. Which in this case is a good thing.
In fact, Alonso has done it again — and with uncanny mastery: he’s created an entire universe of his own that’s mesmerizing and surreal at once, yet also earthly and concrete — as contradictory as that may sound. Although this time Alonso does have “a story” to tell, which wasn’t the case with, say, La Libertad or Los muertos, which are strictly observational and anthropological, the truth still remains that the story/stories told in the director’s new opus often feel like passageways to immerse the viewer into the modes of representation from the so-called primitive cinema, as well as to establish a very lively dialogue with other aesthetics and narratives. This is film not so much for the intellect, but for the realm of the senses.
Set in the times of the Desert Campaign in the Patagonia, Jauja tells the story of a Danish engineer (Viggo Mortensen), his teenage daughter (Danish actress Ghita Nørby) and a handful of soldiers who travel to an uncertain destination as they face unforeseen hardships which include shoot-outs, dead bodies, hallucinations and spectres. Driven by desire and love (or the other way around), the engineer’s daughter flees the scene with a soldier, metaphorically destroying her father’s spirit. Sooner rather than later, he sets on a frantic search to recover the person he loves the most. From then on, new universes are to be unveiled.
Strikingly shot in vivid, luminous colours that might turn dark and ominous in a blink, edited at the most leisured pace you can imagine, and permeated by a dreamlike atmosphere that makes you wonder what’s real and what’s not (does it matter anyway?), Jauja is a most unusual period piece that defies the notions of genre crossbreeding just like it expands the meaning of auteur cinema. And yes, it’s as contemplative as Alonso’s previous features, although it different ways. And the more you contemplate, the better you’ll see the wide panorama unfolding in all its richness. Jauja will be commercially released tomorrow in Buenos Aires.
Production notes
Jauja (Coprod., 2014). Directed by Lisandro Alonso. Written by Lisandro Alonso and Fabián Casas. Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Viilbjork Malling, Esteban Bigliardi, Ghita Nørby. Music by Viggo Mortensen. Produced by Viggo Mortensen. Running time: 108 minutes.
