There's something wrong with Paraguayan audiences if Luna de cigarras truly is the third most-seen local movie in the history of that country. Of course, you can blame it on the fact that Paraguay's film production is very, very scarce.
There are quite a few auteur films, such as Paz Encina's remarkable Hamaca paraguaya (2006), but this type of films doesn't attract many viewers. Or perhaps it’s that the success of 7 cajas (2013), a rather well-crafted mainstream feature, has led viewers to believe that Luna de cigarras could do the trick again. But it doesn’t. For the truth is that Luna de cigarras is a flawed film from beginning to end — to say the least.
The story goes pretty much like this: JD Flitner (Nathan Christopher Haase) is an US young man who arrives in Asunción to seal a dubious deal with El Brasiguayo, a powerful mobster. Yet Gatillo (Javier Enciso), El Brasiguayo’s righthand man, sees an opportunity to cashin on some money for himself and so he cheats both his boss and the US guy.
Sooner rather than later, other local mobsters and thugs join the party and all hell breaks loose, as there’s always a high price to pay for betraying your comrades.
First of all, Luna de cigarras intends to be several things at once and fails in every regard. It wants to be a black comedy mixed with a mobster movie with traces of situation comedy with wacky characters in offbeat situations. The characters are not even sketched and the actors overact all the time, as if that would help flesh out their roles — but some can barely act.
Secondly, as regards the comedic parts, things don’t get any better. The black comedy edge is not black enough at all — it's actually not even grey. And the situation sequences are both predictable and little entertaining. So forget about laughing.
To make matters worse, there’s an opening scene possibly meant to evoke the opening scene in Reservoir Dogs, but then it pales in comparison.
And as this is also a mobster movie (a bad one), there are scattered action scenes with some shootouts that fail to turn violence into spectacle — lame FXs are not much help either. It’s as if the filmmaker had thought of making a movie with traits from these genres but forgot to actually create a gripping story.
That's why you don’t care about the characters, what happens to them and where they end up in. As regards the plot itself, it’s very inconsequential too.
So in the simplest terms: Luna de cigarras may be a well intentioned film seeking a place in an almost non-existent industry, but in spite of its box office gross intake it will certainly make no difference at all.
Production notes:
Luna de cigarras. Paraguay, 2014. Directed: by Jorge de Bedoya. Written by: Nathan Christopher Haase, Jorge de Bedoya. With: Lali Gonzalez, Nathan Christopher Haase, Andrea Quattrocchi, Víctor Sosa, Nico García, Hugo Cataldo, Nathalie Lange. Editing: Rodrigo Salomón. Cinematography: Nahuel Varela. Art direction: Osvaldo Ortiz Faiman. Produced by: Koreko Gua, Oima Films. Running time: 86 minutes. Limited release : BAMA, Arteplex Belgrano.
