Based
on the press photos published by a not particularly sympathetic media, it looked
like the entire nation of Venezuela was on the streets protesting the Chavista
regime during the 2014-2016 demonstrations. Apparently, there were still a
handful of brainwashed loyalists still out there. Ironically, that will be
somewhat fortunate for Alejandra, because she is able to find refuge from
murderous riot police with a true believer from her past in Vadim Lasca’s short
film Normal (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.
You
can hear the chaos and carnage on the streets from Fabricio’s flat, but you can’t
see it because he has plastered over his windows with card board. He is not
about to go peeking out either, lest he be hit by a stray bullet. It is a horrific
scene, which he logically blames on the protestors being shot rather than the
regime enforcers doing the shooting. Suddenly, his solitary cowering is
interrupted when he hears his former never-quite-girlfriend Alejandra desperately
knocking on doors. He will let her in and allow her to clean off her comrades’
blood, but inevitably they will start arguing about politics again.
Normal (as in how did this
madness come to be it?) is an intelligent, well-acted film, but it is Gabriel
Delgado Peterson’s sound design that really makes it. You can hear the roar of
the screams, the sharp crack of bullets, and the duller clank of tear gas canisters
fired into the protestors. Lasca’s screenplay tries to maintain an impartial neutrality
that merely bemoans the way ideology divides people. However, his faithful verisimilitude
stands as a devastating corrective. It just sounds pathetic when Fabricio
blames the horror show on “agent provocateurs” infiltrating the police, because
it is.
