A scene from Eugenio Canevari’s promising debut feature Paula.
By Pablo Suarez
Written and directed by Argentine filmmaker Eugenio Canevari, Paula is a debut feature that shows the firm hand and acute eye of a promising new director right from the start. Featured in Mar del Plata, San Sebastián and London film festivals, Canevari’s opus focuses on an unhappy time in the life of the title character — absorbingly played by newcomer Denise Labbate — a young babysitter and live-in-maid working for an upper-class family on a large rural estate in Pergamino, Buenos Aires province.
Paula leads an ordinary, even dull life as all she does is take care of the family’s children and doing some house chores, with little time for friends or fun. She did recently have a boyfriend, an older man, yet they are not together any longer and haven’t stayed friends either. Which makes it all the more difficult for her to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. Having the baby is out of the question and having an abortion costs much more money that she can afford. Her ex-boyfriend couldn’t care less about it and won’t give her a dime, and Paula clearly knows that talking to the family she works for would definitely mean losing her job.
What first strikes about Paula is its atmospheric cinematography together with the near perfectly tuned performances. Technically impeccable, the photography and the camerawork often isolate and distance Paula within the spaces she dwells in. In this sense, you can deem the film a heartfelt meditation on the loneliness of a character left to her own devices. Not only physical loneliness, but also emotional, which often hurts the most.
With restrained body language and gestures, little dialogue and plenty of pauses and silences, Canevari coaches his actors with strong assurance — some of them are non-professional actors performing in front of the camera for the first time. It is essential for viewers to sensitively relate to Paula’s tribulations, but she should never come across as a hopeless victim. Of course class differences play a central role: if Paula were a member of the class she works for, then her fate would be completely different. But not being one doesn’t turn her into a martyr either. Ultimately, Canevari is after a realistic portrayal of the state of things.
So you see Paula in her everyday quietly turned upside down by her pregnancy. You see her in her mute suffering which could easily be taken for sheer apathy. And you see the others, who are oblivious not only to her needs and wants, but also to those of their own family members. An overall feeling of malaise permeates the entire scenario of well-off parents who don’t connect between themselves or with their offspring and children who don’t connect with themselves.
Occasionally too leisurely-paced, with minor glitches in dramatic progression and with a somewhat overemphasized ending at a too symbolic birthday party, Paula is nonetheless a welcomed debut film which has something that similar outings often lack: narrative coherence and a sense of style.
Production notes
Paula (Argentina, 2015). Written and directed by Eugenio Canevari. With Denise Labbate, Estefanía Blaiotta, Pablo Boccanera, Nazareno Gerde, Justo Carricart, Amelia Carricart. Cinematography: Kasty Castillo, Pali Molentino. Editing: Didac Palou. Running time: 66 minutes.
