ale of mystery set in rural Argentina is an atmospheric slow burner with stunning visuals
POINTS: 7
“In Germania, my first film, I delved into the relationship between man and nature. I explored how the mood of people who had to look for a different life affected the animals on the farm. I find an unavoidable connection between the two,” says Argentine filmmaker Maximiliano Schonfeld about his subtly absorbing debut feature which premiered at BAFICI in 2012. “My second film, La helada negra (“The Black Frost”) was also first conceived as a film about nature. Moreover, it became a film about faith and the small miseries that revolve around any object of worship that may appear in the town I was born and raised.”
Set in a small town in the province of Entre Ríos with a strong community of German ethnics, Germania focused on a family about to move to Brazil when some kind of unknown plague attacks their farm and animals. Why that was happening was a mystery to everybody. At the same time, there was a deep sense that there’s something ominous lurking beneath it all.
Released today, La helada negra is not about people leaving town but about someone arriving in town. Also set in the small town where Germania took place, Schonfeld’s sophomore feature deals with yet another plague that’s threatening a farm — while some other weird stuff also occurs — while it focuses on Alejandra (Ailín Salas), a mysterious young woman who is found sleeping in a field by Lucas (Lucas Schell), a young man whose family’s crops have been killed by a dry freeze, meaning the black frost.
Lucas takes Alejandra to his family’s farm. Soon enough, she starts doing some house chores such as cooking and also helps out with farming tasks. Out of the blue, Alejandra starts showing some magical powers that seem to solve quite of few problems the villagers are facing — the destructive effects of the frost among them. So it’s no surprise the dazed farmers start to worship her as a saint. To them, she maybe the saviour they were in urgent need of. But as time goes by they’ll also harbour some doubts about her identity. Maybe she is not the luminous presence she appears to be.
Unlike Germania, La helada negra is elliptically narrated and it doesn’t tell what you could conventionally call a story. It’s more of an atmospheric feature where what matters is a mystic sense of reality, a scenario where what’s left unsaid triggers many possible interpretations. Scenes take place one after the next without necessarily being dramatically interconnected with a causal logic. So you should be in a contemplative and introspective state of mind to apprehend the universe this at times mesmerizing film turns out to be.
Like Germania, La helada negra cinematography’s is stunning. Warm and not so warm yellowish, brownish, and greenish tones and soft lights render remarkable detail in the shadows, with appealing textures of all sorts. It’s an odd thing for this is a film that’s diaphanous and tangible at once. It’s evocative of a mutating state of things, but also of a motionless state of things, suspended in time.
Non-professional actors — or rather “models”, in the Bressonian sense of the word, and as the filmmaker likes to call them — sometimes play themselves whereas other times they play other people who could be like themselves, but are not precisely them. In this regard, the presence of a well-known, professional actress such as Ailín Salas may create a sense of estrangement in viewers as she distances herself from the other actors. This feeling of estrangement can be seen as an equivalent to how the villagers perceive her. Because above it all, she’s a stranger and will never be one of them — no matter how involved in the community she gets.
La helada negra is deliberately slow-paced, sometimes excruciatingly so, and while it makes sense and does work for a good deal of the screening time, it should be said that at times it drags. This is when you feel not only the town is suspended in time, but also the narrative. In any case, it’s pretty much up to viewers to decide whether it does the trick for them or not.
You could also say that some sequences of the film work better in the level of ideas than in anything else, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. But it can pull you out of the film for it can create a distance between the scene and the emotions it arouses. All in all, La helada negra does certainly have far more assets than missteps, and considering what a personal and challenging film it is, then it’s more than an accomplishment.
production notes
La helada negra (Argentina, 2016) Written and directed by Maximiliano Schonfeld. With Ailín Salas, Lucas Schell. Cinematography: Soledad Rodríguez. Editing: Anita Remón. Running time: 82 minutes.
@pablsuarez
