POINTS: 7
Winner of the DAC Award for Best Direction, of the Argentores Award for Best Script, and the Special Mention of the Jury of the Argentine competition at last year’s Mar del Plata Film Festival, Los cuerpos dóciles (“The Docile Bodies”), written and directed by novel helmer Matías Scarvaci and Diego Gachassin (Vladimir en Buenos Aires, co-director of Habitación disponible) is a rare bird on the local scene of observational documentaries —for a number of very different reasons.
For starters, it boasts a very appealing raw energy and a great ability to convey its ideas as well as to elicit a strong response from viewers.
Whereas many observational documentaries tend to ask for a contemplative mindset from viewers, Los cuerpos dóciles does the opposite: it prompts you to want to be a part of what goes on the big screen. Or, better said, to be physically there to see more of the multifaceted scenario. And we’re talking about a truly complex reality.
The documentary takes its name the concept of the docile bodies in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and it follows the everyday professional work of the well-known criminal defence lawyer Alfredo García Kalb as he conducts a case in which his defendants, two impoverished youngsters from Greater BA, are charged with a crime that apparently they did not commit. Or, at least, not as charged. That remains to be seen.
In any case, the point is that, like so many young people — and others not so young — from the fringes of society, they are confronted with a local law system that’s no longer fair or reliable as it claims it is. For that matter, the often feeble status of justice in Argentina doesn’t affect solely these people, but it hurts them particularly.
It’s a good thing that García Kalb is a character himself, so to speak, with or without a documentary about him and his work, because that helps quite a lot to build a meaty drama. Among other things, he’s a family man, a drummer with a band, and an altruist whose work is mostly devoted to those who cannot afford the high fees most lawyers would charge. He knows the penitentiary system is not at all a place to inmates’ resocialization for their punishment, and so they live in very poor, subhuman conditions. He also says that the police forces are now more like political forces meant to take people off the streets at any cost. Of course, people who the system finds undesirable.
But make no mistake. Los cuerpos dóciles is not agit-prop and it doesn’t cast a judgment on the characters it analyzes. It’s not about saying who the good guys and the bad guys are. Instead, it dissects the system and how it is implemented and this way it exposes its perversions together with its traps and intentional errors. In so doing, it shows how not everybody is equal before the law. It goes without saying that this problem is not in the least restricted to Argentina, hence its universal dimension.
Neatly filmed in static shots for the scenes at the oral trials and other indoor shots when Kalb is with his children, and an expressive hand-held camera for exteriors when Kalb meets his clients and relatives, Los cuerpos dóciles swiftly manages to convey the state of things with remarkable realism and the right tempo along its 74 minutes. Though the characters know they are being filmed, they surely don’t show it, which opens the door to moments of exceptional emotional intensity.
In any case, you could say that Kalb occasionally performs for the camera with all his histrionic personality, but if that’s so, then there’s nothing to worry about, since he’s a compelling actor. As compelling as the documentary itself.
Limited release
Sundays at 6pm at the Gaumont Movie Theatre (Rivadavia 1635) and the MALBA (Av. Figueroa Alcorta 3415).
Production notes
Los cuerpos dóciles (Argentina, 2015). Written and directed by Diego Gachassin, Matías Scarvaci. Cinematography: Diego Gachassin. Editing: Valeria Racioppi. Running time: 74 minutes.
@pablsuarez
