Javier
Belmonte is no Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. This artist has no aptitude for
self-promotion, so if he is going to make it in the art world, it be solely due
to talent. Unfortunately, he is not much better at navigating his own personal
relationships in Federico Veiroj’s Belmonte,
the opening night film of this year’s Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American Cinema.
Frankly,
Belmonte really should not complain about his career, because he has a
retrospective opening soon at a prominent Montevideo museum. However, Belmonte
does not do success well. He is more comfortable with disappointment, such as
his failed marriage to Jeanne, whom he clearly still carries a torch for. At
least Belmonte tries to pull himself together when his bright but highly
sensitive daughter Celeste visits. The end, more or less.
To
say that Belmonte has a loose, unhurried
narrative would be a whopper of an understatement. Basically, this is
seventy-five minutes of watching a man with more advantages in life than many “first
worlders” have—commercial and critical credibility in the art world, a loving
daughter—mope and brood his way through sunny Montevideo. However, there is
something oddly compelling about his social awkwardness. In fact, we can see a
kinship between him and Jorge, the shy yet hopeful art-house cinema programmer
in Veiroj’s mature but life-affirming A Useful Life.
In
fact, real-life painter Gonzalo Delgado’s breakout performance as Belmonte is
quite impressive. Delgado contributed some design work to two of Veiroj’s prior
films, so he must have picked up something through osmosis. Young Olivia
Molinaro Eijo is also quite a remarkable discovery as Celeste. She is completely
natural and unaffected on-screen, while also forging some warmly affectionate
chemistry with Delgado.
In
addition to portraying Belmonte, Delgado also supplied his paintings, which are
quite striking, even if they seem to beg for a full battery of psycho-sexual
Freudian analysis. Regardless, viewers will completely believe that Delgado is
an artist, as he indeed is, and that his paintings are worthy of collectors’
attention.
The
problem is it just doesn’t amount to very much, so there no way it could have
the staying power of Useful Life. It
is like a salad with a tasteful dressing, but no protein. Recommended to a
limited extent, based on the quite endearing father-daughter relationship, Belmonte screens this Friday (2/22) at
the Walter Reade Theater, as the opening selection of Neighboring Scenes 2019.
