La vida de alguien, Ezequiel Acuña’s new film, concerns the story of Guille (Santiago Pedrero), a young musician who decides to reunite the members of a band he’d created 10 years ago. And for a very good reason: a label wants to release the album they’d recorded before they separated, which never hit the market. But in so doing, he’ll realize that the former members of the band have changed quite a bit. Specifically as regards one of them, nobody has a clue as to where he is. In time, Guille meets a very cute girl, Lucía (Ailín Salas), who will also be part of the band alongside a former friend of Guille and two new guys.
Just like Guille has a very hard time in putting his band together again, Acuña doesn’t seem to find a way to craft a solid script to account for the vicissitudes of the scenario of indie rock bands. La vida de alguien can be seen as a film that never goes beyond the first act: that is to say, establishing the time and space where the action takes place, introducing the characters, and exposing the main conflict.
From then on, you only have a long series of scenes with the musicians rehearsing, some of them played in slow motion and with fade-outs. Other things that happen may include some small talk, a love affair to be, male bonding and more music. There are some more developed conversations here and there, but what is said and how it is said don’t amount to much either. It’s all very anecdotal and at times also way shallow.
And while it’s true that, thanks to Fernando Lockett’s luminous cinematography, there’s a somewhat entrancing atmosphere as well as certain charm, the substance of the drama is so minuscule and spread out that, sooner rather than later, even the most alluring visuals cannot make up for such major flaws. Nothing much happens here.
Not to mention how underwritten the characters are, which turns them into distant figures executing a few actions provided by the script. In the same way, no omnipresent arrangement of songs — no matter how good they are — will be a substitute for the need of a stronger screenplay.
