Your (L)ove

This was the best film I saw at the Guadalajara International Film Festival back in March.
I was afraid I'd never see it again, given it's a short film and everything. However thanks to the magic of YouTube here it is and I wanted to share it with you all.
It's a lovely told love story that reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Brief Encounter. It is told with such authoritative expertise that I ended up using it as a manual of sorts; not that you care about my sentimental affairs but this movie helped me heal from one of the worst heartbreaks I've ever had.
Its insistence in decoding the nature of love through biological processes is only more aching because we know there's no reasoning when the heart speaks out...

How did you like it?

Kinatay ***

Director: Brillante Mendoza
Cast: Coco Martin, Maria Isabel Lopez, Jhong Hilario
Julio Diaz, Mercedes Cabral

Young, police academy, student Peping (Martin) takes a job for $2,000 in order to marry his girlfriend (Cabral).
After leaving school on the appointed day (he's in a criminology class in the first of many Dostoevskian touches the film offers) he gets on a van with a group of men-all his superior officers- who then go to a strip club where they pick up Madonna (Lopez), a dancer who owes them drug money.
After she gets in the car they beat her, drive for hours (literally, the scenes inside the van cover roughly one third of the film's running time) and take her to a basement where they proceed with their plan as a display of extreme violence ensues.
Once there Peping realizes it's too late to back off and enters a path of moral decay through which director Mendoza tries to encompass the state of Filipino society and ask us what we would've done.
Kinatay is not a movie for those who are easily disturbed (the title is Filipino for "butchered"), it features moments straight out of the goriest horror film, paired with dark sociological implications that make the violence seem more shocking.
Shot with handheld cameras and what appears to be a great use of natural light-and darkness-the film tries to put us inside Peping's head and make us see what he sees and hears.
For long moments the screen turns almost completely dark while Mendoza experiments with interesting sonic devices. There is a disturbing ambient sound throughout the movie which suggests the cloudiness that invades the protagonist's conscience as he becomes part of a crime.
It's impossible for audience members not to expect Peping to take an heroic path and when he doesn't Kinatay turns into a cinematic experience unlike many you've had.
It's easy to leave the film and call Mendoza's work pornographic, sensationalist or abusive, but where is our responsibility as active audience members who sit through this?
In a way, like Peping, we are drawn to brutality and even those with the intention of obtaining some sort of knowledge out of the situation are accomplices of sorts.
The entire running time we watch how the events unfold; a feeling of impotence prevails over the entire film as we try to decide whether Peping is antihero, victim or perpetrator.
What Mendoza has to say about the corruption that seeps within law enforcement is really nothing new but what he wonders about the way it vacuums people into its destruction is fascinating.
Could Peping do something? Can we?

Love is All We Need *1/2

Director: Jorge Durán
Cast: Cauã Reymond, Ângelo Antônio, Fabiula Nascimento
Simone Spoladore, Victor Navega Motta

Love is All We Need (Não se pode viver sem amor) is the third film by Chilean writer/director Jorge Durán. Set in Rio de Janeiro during Christmas Eve, it follows multiple characters as they reach collective epiphanies revolving around love of course.
Young Gabriel (Motta) and Roseli (Spoladore) arrive to the city looking for the boy's father, unemployed lawyer Joao (Reymond) decides to try the criminal way in order to get enough money to elope with his girlfriend Gilda (Nascimento), while university professor Pedro (Antônio) wonders where his future will take him.
To say that the film's opening credits (a Saul Bass-y stars and jazz stunner of an opener) are much more interesting than anything that comes later, might be a disservice to anyone who worked in the film but becomes quite accurate when the movie reaches its climax.
Durán focuses on forcing the connections instead of letting them grow organically and all the characters seem to know they're predestined to know each other and learn something valuable.
It doesn't help that each of their stories isn't never that interesting to begin with and we might create assumptions of our own to make the whole thing matter more.
Therefore as Gabriel travels around the city looking for his dad we begin to assume he might be connected to Gilda-the stripper with a secret-in the end of course they are, but not in conventional ways.
The characters' motivations are never clear and the actors end up giving extreme performances that hurt the film's theme of unity (Reymond and Antônio are all about restraint, Nascimento is extreme theatrical and Motta intends well but suffers because of the ridiculous twists his character endures).
Durán chooses to end his film with a moment that should recall magical realism but comes off as a tacky deus ex machina complete with the ugliest looking visual effects ever.
If the director was trying to unite the rawness of digital film (in honestly most of the film has the texture and look of a soap opera) with the richness of Brazil's culture, the result is often more confusing, dull and shallow than magical.

Cold Water of the Sea **

Director: Paz Fábrega
Cast: Luis Carlos Bogantes, Lil Quesada Morúa, Montserrat Fernández

Cold Water of the Sea overflows with beauty to conceal the fact that it has nothing to say. Set in a Costa Rican beach during the New Year, the plot follows Rodrigo (Bogantes) and Mariana (Morúa) a young couple who travel to the coast so he can settle a business deal.
On their first night there they find Karina (Fernández) a seven year old who seems to be lost and tells Mariana of the hardships she endures at home.
The following morning they wake up to realize the little girl has disappeared. Rodrigo goes on with life as usual but Mariana is stricken in a different way and begins an introspective journey which unleashes past traumas and connects her to the girl in an unexpected way.
If all this sounds very Persona and Fábrega in a way is implying there exists a metaphysical connection between them (can they be each other? will rescuing one mean salvation for the other?) this is only suggested by forced methods of visual poetry and ominous silences.
The director assumes that by showing moments where "nothing" happens, the audience will be immersed into the profundity she thinks her movie has.
Therefore we have scenes where Mariana dives into a filthy pool (in an obvious "problematic cleansing" metaphor) or she sobs quietly answering "I don't know what's wrong with me" to her concerned boyfriend.
There is also a recurring theme of sea snakes lying on the shore; supposedly they come out due to the low temperatures in the sea water but other than for biological novelty's sake-and stunning visuals of course provided by cinematographer María Secco- it serves no real purpose within the plot.
Is the director suggesting that Karina is a snake? Is Mariana's past the snake? Like the phenomenon involving the reptiles, the whole movie is actually plagued with elements that intend to contribute to build something but make no sense and more than that, never engage the audience into the issues onscreen.
A past of sexual abuse is suggested with trickery, a physiological event that confuses instead of stating and we never understand why Mariana's profession is important to the plot.
Kudos though to little Fernández who builds her character in a way that we wonder if she's a victim or The Bad Seed. Her movements in front of the camera are as natural as they come and her eyes suggest enough viciousness and innocence to merit her a much better movie.
The adult actors fall under the director's spell and spend the whole movie underacting to the point of dullness.
We never understand why Mariana came with Rodrigo, then he disappears for several key scenes and seems to be annoyed by her more than he's worried.
Morúa, who probably intends well, never taps into the inner life of her character and as much as Mariana is driven by inertia, Morúa makes her every action too mechanic.
As appealing as the movie is on pure visuals alone, everything we watch serves no actual purpose but unlike something Bergman or Antonioni would've made, the void here feels unintentional.
It tries so hard to be symbolic and important that it forgoes the road of coherence (within its frame of course) in favor of a series of moments that truly never engage people watching or the characters within the film.
Why do Mariana's friends appear at the beach? Why is Karina's relationship with her mother so strained?
As the movie becomes more and more frustrating we witness other events that reveal that it's probably because Fábrega doesn't have the capacity to make something universal out of everything she wants to say.
She has problems contextualizing the movie for example and until the end, it's never quite clear for audience members (especially those who don't speak Spanish) that the movie takes place during the last days of December and once there they will be even more confused by very Costa Rican traditions that onscreen come off as completely different things (camping at the beach is easily mistaken as extreme poverty or even refugee camps).
While this means that the director perhaps didn't intend her movie for foreign audiences, the pseudo metaphysics, draggy narrative and psychological lack of depth in the whole thing, might imply that the only person meant to enjoy and "get" the film was the director herself.

Together **1/2

Director: Matias Armand Jordal
Cast: Fridtjov Saheim, Odin Waage, Evy Kasseth Rosten

Like most tragic family dramas Together begins with a portrait of practical idyll as Kristine (Rosten) and Roger (Saheim) take their son Pal (Waage) out bowling to celebrate his birthday.
Between the giggles, friendly teases and hugs the family share, we begin to detect the underlying tensions between them as Roger later demands his slow-learning son to order from the restaurant's menu without any help.
Kristine quickly dispels this episode with a friendly joke and it becomes obvious how without her, father and son would be in trouble.
Two scenes later she's dead.
After this the plot centers on the tough relationship between the boys, especially given how Pal struggles to move on while his father descends into alcoholism and self destruction.
Pretty soon they turn into each other as the kid manages the house and even picks up his drunk dad from a bar after he gets in a fight.
The performances from the two lead actors are compelling and quite moving despite the film's shortcomings.
Saheim (who might remind you of Russell Crowe) is charming enough to make his pain and unquestionable neglect almost understandable.
Sometimes he convinces us that because of his role as a grieving husband, his behavior towards his son is normal. That achievement is impressive-if a bit problematic in sensitive terms-regarding the legal implications of raising a child.
Waage stands on his own giving a wonderful performance that manages to be sad, introverted and sometimes intensely ecstatic without ever forgetting he's a child.
The problem is that the director doesn't let the actors do the work and turns almost every scene into a soap opera waiting to happen.
He amps every element available to tug at your heart and stir your emotions robbing the film of an opportunity to work with more restrained Nordic notions.
Jordal never lets the audience discover things on their own and not only wears his heart on his sleeve but constantly waves at us so we can see it.
In one of the most effective sequences Pal runs away from home and recreates one of the most beautiful moments in Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (from which Together borrows several themes).
If you weren't sure what you'd seen was homage, Jordal confirms it by placing Pal against a French poster for the movie, which only works to neutralize the potential, simple poetry the scene, and the film, could've contained.

Retratos en un mar de mentiras **

Director: Carlos Gaviria
Cast: Paola Baldión, Julián Román, Edgardo Román
Carolina Lizarazo, Ramses Ramos, Ana María Arango

Retratos en un mar de mentiras (an interesting wordplay between either Portraits in a Sea of Lies or Portraits in a Fake Sea) is a road movie that travels from fantasy to fiction, trying to grasp the vast array of problems in modern day Colombia.
Marina (Baldión) is an introverted young woman who lives with her abusive grandfather (Edgardo Román) after her family was killed when she was a child. When her grandfather dies- in a freaky accident that comes off as a botched attempt at magic realism- she leaves on a trip with her cousin Jairo (Julián Román) to reclaim grandpa's inheritance in the town where she was born. Jairo is a womanizing photographer who takes Polaroids using a fake ocean view as stage (hence the film's title) and takes Marina with him only to see what he can get out of it.
As they drive towards the coastal town across the entire country they encounter situations that speak a greater truth than their own story.
One darkly funny episode has them stop in the middle of the road to wait for a battle between guerrilla and military forces to end.
As the drivers wait patiently, bullets fly over their heads threatening their lives and in the scene's oddest moment, one of the men asks Jairo to take his picture to commemorate his first ambush.
Moments like this fill the film with a sense of charm which the main plot never fulfills. Gaviria has trouble letting the story and characters grow for themselves and indulges in oversimplifying turns by practically digesting them for his audience (we don't need a flashback of Marina's family's murder but he does one in sepia and slow motion!).
There's also the sexual attraction that brews between Marina and Julián which could've been explored in much more profound ways but is left as a device to humanize one and enlighten the other.
The director forgets at all times about that richness that surrounds his story and how it tells itself without the need for pointing things out specifically.
The movie somehow becomes a remake of La Strada with the tough, brutish male leading the slow minded weaker female through a life changing journey (Gaviria even sets his redemption scene at a beach) but unlike Fellini's masterpiece which turned realism into poetry, Retratos en un mar de mentiras' attempt to be transcendent makes us want to take a different road.

Southern District ***1/2

Director: Juan Carlos Valdivia
Cast: Ninón del Castillo, Pascual Loayza
Nicolás Fernández, Juan Pablo Koria, Mariana Vargas
Viviana Condori, Luisa de Urioste, Glenda Rodríguez

Set in an upper class zone of the Bolivian capital, Southern District takes us inside the house of a family as they go through their daily lives.
Carola (del Castillo), the mother and head of the house, lives with her children Patricio (Koria), Bernarda (Vargas) and Andrés (Fernández).
They also share the house with Wilson (Loayza) the butler, who has become a conflicting father figure of sorts and Marcelina (Condori) the maid.
We see as Carola deals with her daughter's disdain for her social class, Patricio's overpowering sex drive (his girlfriend is played by Luisa de Urioste) and little Andrés' fantastical existence.
Within their problems we encounter a microcosms of what Bolivia has become, as social classes shift and indigenous people begin to regain the place they have been denied for ages (notable mostly with the complicated relationship between Wilson and Carola who have trouble dividing the lines between service and family).
If at first glance the plot sounds familiar, the director gives it a new perspective relying on a camera formalism that might recall Godard and Antonioni.
Valdivia takes this soap opera concept and transforms it into a fascinating study of concealment and alienation.
Aided by cinematographer Paul de Lumen, the director comes up with a visual plan during which the camera never leaves the family house.
Every scene is composed of long shots, dollies and crane shots that move around the sets, sometimes in complete disregard of the characters (which leaves us with beheaded actors, dialogues heard behind closed doors and a restless mobility that both explores and seeks escape).
The director, who has worked in Mexican soap operas, has no trouble creating dramatic tension in the obvious set up of family quarrels and confrontations but Southern District's brilliance lies in its reevaluation of the familiar.
The film's key scene might be one where Patricio wants to tape a sexual encounter he has with his girlfriend. At her reluctance he tries to ease her into it by telling her to imagine "there's two people", one who makes love to her and the other who films it.
Valdivia's camera works in the same way as it moves throughout the house caressing the mementos and characters, while it tries to absorb all the information it can to help us understand, if not empathize, with these people's superficial existence.
During one chilling moment the camera shows us how all the characters, except Andrés, stand inside the house looking out behind clear glass windows.
We are instantly reminded of an earlier moment where we saw a bunch of bottled butterflies in Andrés' room.
Valdivia gives us the idea that he's exploring autobiographical territory, if not directly at least in ways of inspiration, particularly with Andrés.
The little boy who wants to fly away (literally with a pair of wings he built) and figuratively as he dreams of becoming a filmmaker and discusses this with his imaginary friend appropriately called Spielberg (the nods to E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial and other Spielbergian themes speak for themselves).
Andrés is the only family member who at one point leaves the house-learning about a social reality he practically ignored-and as such we wonder if Valdivia is perhaps suggesting that art is the most efficient way to escape the harshness of reality.

Dirty Mind **1/2

Director: Pieter Van Hees
Cast: Wim Helsen, Robbie Cleiren
Kristine Van Pellicom, Peter Van den Begin, Maaike Neuville

In the most obvious exploitation style, Dirty Mind gets a cinematography treatment that turns every image into a grainy, almost kinky, voyage into the mind of Diego (Helsen); a shy, introverted stuntman who after an accident is transformed into the cocky, outgoing Tony T.
For his brother and colleague Cisse (Cleiren) this boosts business, as the new version of Diego has no regards for safety and will do anything to get the job.
For doctor Jaana (Van Pellicom) who's doing research, Diego becomes the perfect test subject to prove her theories about something called lateral syndrome.
Things get complicated when she realizes she might be falling for her patient and her scientific duty is to revert his condition.
Playing with notions of right, wrong and the power of science over emotions, the film mostly rides on a smooth, pleasant wave during which the director creates some priceless comedic sequences along with intriguing romantic turns.
Unfortunately soon enough we discover this is the same film we've seen a million times before under more traditional storytelling.
For all of Van Hees' postmodern use of title cards and Tarantino-esque homage, Dirty Mind remains rather innocent and for all its "we're more reliable than Mac and we crash better than Windows" quirk, the film can't hide the fact that it's all stunts and no action.

Garapa ***

Director: José Padilha

Garapa is a film about contrasts; it focuses its attention on the lives of three Brazilian families whose major ailment is extreme hunger.
When they can't afford milk, one of the families relies on garapa (a drink made out of water and sugar cane) to satiate its hunger. While a mother from another family has to hide milk so her alcoholic husband won't sell it to buy cachaca (ironically nothing more than fermented garapa).
This might be a too obvious example of contrast but director Padilha makes sure that his movie becomes more of a clash of ideas and emotions than a mere "let's save the world" documentary.
The film might have United Nations bookends but it's center is pure out-of-the-box filmmaking that dares us to see how much we can take.
Most of the scenes are made out of moments where filth, human misery and despair might provoke actual physical discomfort in audience members who, with reason, would run away from a similar scene in real life.
Padilha asks us then why is it easier for us to confront moments of pain like this on a movie screen than out in the streets. It's especially interesting to see the dichotomy he creates between our ability to remain seated while we watch people suffer and the relation this has to the fact that it's being filtered through film (just how much have our notions of non fiction have to do with a certain disbelief on what we see onscreen is a different matter altogether).
He cleverly shoots the film in high contrast black and white, which tricks our mind into thinking we might be watching a neorrealist film in the tradition of Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema.
The milky texture of the whites is unsettling enough to make us aware that the intensity of the light sometimes helps conceal darker truths.
During some scenes the image turns almost completely dark except for little creases inside the shacks that allow glimmers of light to show us reality in subtle strokes.
It's mostly this contrast between the strange, almost primitive, beauty of the images onscreen and the raw tragedy they portray that encompass what Garapa is all about.
Like the problem it deals with, you can't just watch it and establish what's right, what's wrong or how to fix it.

Why the FICG Rocked My World.

So yes, I'm finally back and blogging after ten days of pure movie bliss. I had no idea film festivals could be so exhausting and between the screenings, drink-until-early-hours-of-the-morn' parties, conferences and sight seeing I honestly had no chance to write a single word about any of the films I saw.
I did see wonderful things which you will learn all about in the upcoming days (I have a theory about an alternate Oscar win now) and I gained new faith in the art of the short film (why oh why don't we get more of them?).
The overall experience was fantastic and I really urge everyone out there to make sure they visit Guadalajara at least once; it's such a wonderful city!
Not only is it breathtakingly beautiful but it is also one of the most cultural places I've ever been to. Few things have given me as much pleasure as watching a bunch of 14 year olds walk into the screening of an Israeli film and actually stop texting while the movie played.
But that wasn't the only great thing about Guadalajara;

• It was fascinating to learn about the different takes on film criticism between Europeans and Americans.
  While screenwriter Michael Tolkin all but declared that criticism was irrelevant in the face of Twitter and blogs, European festival organizers saw this as an opportunity to reaffirm the need of leading voices in film criticism that actually contribute to the overall experience of watching a film.
  There was a debate between important Latin American film critics that stimulated me intellectually in shamelessly pleasurable ways.
• I had no idea how old Matt Dillon actually was. He sure looks good though.
• I attended the world premiere of a movie which didn't even have an IMDB page yet! More about that soon...
• Ugh it's so ridiculous to think of the amount of movies that never get distribution in most countries. Out of the dozen or so films I saw there are some that have only premiered in festivals and Norway!
• The screenwriter of Goodbye, Lenin! bought me a beer!
• A Prophet is nothing short of majestic on a giant movie screen.
• Diego Luna has got to be one of the nicest movie people out there, I wasn't even starstruck when I was in the same room with him!
• Kinatay was a letdown in terms of shock...am I becoming too difficult to surprise?
• Nothing like Europop to uplift a so-so movie and make it more entertaining than it has any right to be.
  

More to come about the fabulous festival movies after I get a much needed rest...
How have all of you been?