The Limits of Control *1/2

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Isaach de Bankolé, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton
Gael García Bernal, Hiam Abbass, John Hurt, Paz de la Huerta

Watching "The Limits of Control" two questions come to mind: does Isaach de Bankolé ever smile and what the hell was Jim Jarmusch thinking when he made this movie?
The stone faced de Bankolé stars as a hitman on some sort of a mission that has him traveling across Spain where he meets with strange characters that give him matchboxes.
Somewhere in between conversations about molecules, Rita Hayworth, bohemians and old guitars Jarmusch expects us to have an epiphany about existence.
What he fails to see is that he's the one who's going through an existential crisis and a plot-less movie will not help him solve it.
The movie plays out like a really bad dream (if Jarmusch was trying to pay homage to David Lynch he never reaches the fascinating creepiness and surprising universality of Lynch's stream-of-consciousness movies) with selfindulgent cinematography by Christopher Doyle who does capture beautiful images, that play like awkward Renault commercials.
The saddest thing is that Jarmusch is probably aware of how empty his movie is and often tries to justify himself in the silliest ways.
When a gangster (played by Murray) asks de Bankolé "how did you get here?" he answers "I used my imagination". This response plays more like "The Matrix" by way of "Sesame Street" than as a spark to make us reflect on how the whole thing might be a dream within a dream.
During the film's only interesting scene Swinton appears as a blond (Jarmusch references tons of film noirs here) with a movie obsession.
She tells de Bankolé that she likes movies where you don't know if you're having a dream or watching a film.
Jarmusch should've learned that sometimes dreams, like films, should be kept all to oneself.

Rudo y Cursi ***1/2

Director: Carlos Cuarón
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna
Guillermo Francella, Dolores Heredia, Jessica Mas, Adriana Paz

Writer Vernon Young once said "[Ingmar] Bergman is the only practicing director who can make an eloquent film from a rag, a bone and a hank of hair."
Vernon was probably not being literal about the elements but about the ability a good film has to go beyond the boundaries of theme, subject and whatever interest the audience might have in them to find something they can connect and identify with.
That is the case with Carlos Cuarón's debut film "Rudo y Cursi" which had at least three different possibilities it could've been tagged, and boxed, within but cleverly escapes them all.
The film opens in a Mexican coastal town where brothers Tato (García Bernal) and Beto (Luna) work in a banana plantation.
Besides a job, they also share a home with their mother (the superb Heredia), Beto's wife (a wonderful Paz) and children, plus the dream of leaving their town to pursue their ideal careers.
Beto wants to be a professional goalie for a football team, while Tato, who is just as good playing football, dreams of becoming a singer. Their dream becomes possible when Batuta (Francella), an Argentinean talent scout, accidentally runs into them when his car is being repaired in their town.
He asks to become their manager and when they agree has them move to Mexico City where they end up playing in opposing football teams and obtain the title nicknames; Beto is "Rudo" ("Rough") and Tato "Cursi" ("Corny").
Their consequential rivalry only serves as canvas for an elaborately satiric landscape of modern Mexican, and Latin American, society in general where the illusion of easy wealth and love of the sport have become interconnected.
Cuarón's screenplay ably mixes the right amount of humor and drama in a way following the formula used in his famous work for "Y Tu Mamá También"; this film also has offscreen narration, provided by Batuta who delivers wise parables and parallels about football and life.
Most of the film relies on contrasts to work at its best, some include the perils of confusing game and war, being disappointed by the discrepancies between talent and passion and the ever present inadequacies present in fast social class change.
Therefore, the funniest parts in the film come when the lead characters' ways scream "nouveau riche" as they buy the fanciest cars, wear the oddest clothes and hairstyles and pursue dreams which had been limited by their lack of economic means.
It's also curious, and admirable, how Cuarón never lets Rudo and Cursi become aware of these facts; should we feel less by what our dreams are?
García Bernal and Luna provide splendid work; at first their rural accent might sound affected by those who can perceive them stressing their acting chops. Eventually these slightly distracting elements give path to fully realized performances.
García Bernal releases a contagious energy that makes Cursi's dilemma between who he is and who he wishes he could be, more heartbreaking than funny.
When he becomes involved with a notable TV celebrity (Mas) he represents the realization of the hopes who for most remain unfulfilled (Cuarón has a hard time avoiding his story to become a morality tale though).
Luna's Rudo, who got the nickname for the aggressive way he acts on the football field, embodies a very masculine need to overpower everything. That he has problems with his wife serves as an appropriate balance to his volatile persona.
It's funny how the way Cuarón sometimes drives his characters to extreme, almost caricaturesque, opposites doesn't ever get out of his hands.
And in the same way the entire movie relies on contrast, its real beauty lies in the balance found in the overlapping situations.
This becomes more obvious with Francella's character (that he is an Argentinean narrating a movie that revolves around Mexican soccer is a delicious inside joke), Batuta (which literally means "conducting baton") is a man that directs other lives, perhaps because he lacked purpose in his own, or perhaps because this was what he always wanted.
Early on the film paints him a bit like a devil figure, in one of the first scenes where he watched Rudo and Cursi playing (offscreen to us) his eyes light up in such a way that they represent both "ka-ching" and a childlike joy in finding people who would be perfect for his orchestra of sorts.
Throughout this Francella steals every scene as he exists on three different levels: as who Rudo and Cursi know, as what he knows himself to be and as our link to everything (he breaks the fourth wall on a couple of occasions).
People who watch the movie ignorant to the Latin American sociopolitical context will enjoy it for its effective storytelling, ultimate values and engaging characters.
Audience members however don't need to have a clue about what football is about (most of the matches are offscreen and we barely see Rudo and Cursi actually kicking or grabbing a ball, the sport is merely a McGuffin perhaps?) which is why this can't qualify as a "sports movie".
In the end it's slightly surprising that some people will find themselves biting their fingernails as the movie leads to its final, life defining match.
Those who have a clue about the universe where the film takes place in will probably be even more delighted for the way everything about it defies conceptions.
"Rudo y Cursi" could've steered into an offensive parody about the Latin American way of life, a sports film or a star vehicle based on the audience draw of its two leads.
That it doesn't encompasses the ultimate melancholic spirit of a movie meant to show us that what we want isn't always what we need.

Blindness *1/2

Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal
Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura, Don McKellar

"Allegorical poetic films never do work."
- Pauline Kael

In an unnamed city, in an unnamed country, an unnamed man (Iseya) suddenly becomes blind.
His wife (Kimura) rushes him to an ophthalmologist (Ruffalo) who assures him that they will find a cure, or at least an explanation, for whatever caused this.
The following morning the doctor wakes up and realizes he's gone blind as well. During the following days the disease, which becomes known as the "White Sickness", spreads among the population leaving the government no other choice, of course, than to quarantine all the affected and leave them to their own devices until they know how to handle the situation.
Unbeknown to most people is the fact that the doctor's wife (Moore) has inexplicably retained her eyesight and pretends to be blind in order to be with her husband.
She however seems to ignore Erasmus' famous saying and chooses instead to become some sort of slave in what slowly turns into a decaying microcosm.
The blind are left at the mercy of the military who fears becoming infected by the disease and are forced to live in inhuman conditions. Soon a dictatorship is formed in one of the hospital wards, where a man (Bernal) names himself king and takes over food distribution exchanging it for jewelry, money and sexual favors.
As the people adapt to this new life, we are left to wonder what exactly caused it, how will they survive and even more mysterious, what exactly is going on outside the hospital?
Adapted from Nobel Prize winner José Saramago's homonymous novel, "Blindness" is the kind of film that should come with a warning letting us know that allegories and metaphorical laziness are closer than they appear.
Within the pedigree it boasts, it has forgotten that at the core of any artistic experience is the need for identification.
People don't need to agree with art for them to take it as art, what they need is to feel that the author meant to say something and knew how to justify his message.
"Blindness" is so selfconscious of its own didacticism that it forgets to care about itself or the characters in it.
While the idea that anonymity encourages empathy seems to be effective, the problem is that the characters here aren't just missing a backstory, but an identity.
The actors play archetypes instead of characters and they do a bad job because the traits given to them have been so diluted for instant consume that they are left with nothing to work on.
The casting which tries to be all politically correct and United Nations like by having Asian, Hispanic, Black and White characters in the lead roles fails because instead of promoting diversity it encourages racial stereotypes.
Therefore we are left with an exotic Brazilian prostitute (Braga), a wise, weathered black man (Glover in a role that Morgan Freeman could've played in his sleep) and a slightly chauvinistic Asian man (Iseya) all subjugated by the opression of minorities in the hospital scenes and later left to be rescued by the almighty white characters.
Yes, it's true that the people in the film can't see what they all look like, but the audience can and despite cinematographer César Charlone's attempts to emulate the milky blindness of the ill, we remain esentially visual beings and the film's style remains esentially pompous going on humble.
Saramago's book was colloquial and his writing even vulgar to a point, but the way in which his pen spits the words (without even taking the time to punctuate) gave his story an urgency that Meirelle's lethargic interpretation completely misses.
We know all along that at some point of the film something within us is expected to click and make us go "Oh! This isn't so different from the world we're living in", but the moment never comes precisely because not even the director himself seems to have faith in the story he's telling.
It's true that allegories retain an implicit sense of ambiguity, but we must remember that even artistic symbolism springs from a precise sociopolitical and historical context of which this film seems to be unaware.
When referring to the doctor's wife one of the characters expresses how having a "leader with vision" makes them feel safe.
And while the term makes sense during these politically minded times (and almost seems to have been borrowed from some presidential slogan) the same can not be said of Mereilles who takes his film into emotionally drained, intellectually selfindungent roads where it's always the blind leading the blind.