The Fist of the Condor, Starring Marko Zaror

El Guerrero is not yet as blind as Zatoichi, but his extremely light-sensitive eyes are irreversibly deteriorating. As a consolation, the same is true for his sworn rival, which makes sense, since that happens to be his twin brother Gemelo. Each wants to control the book that holds all the secrets of Rumi Maki, an ancient Incan martial art. Obviously, when it comes to this kind of knowledge, there can be only one. Both archetypal brothers are played by Chilean martial arts superstar Marko Zaror in Ernesto Diaz Espinoza’s The Fist of the Condor, which screens this Tuesday in Drafthouses theaters across the country.

The two brothers wanted to learn the ancient Condor-style martial art discipline from Mother Condor, but she only deemed El Guerrero worthy. However, Gemelo kept watching them outside the grounds of her school, biding his time. Now, Gemelo is a master and a criminal kingpin, but he still worries about what his brother might know.

For years, El Guerrero has trained for an inevitable showdown with his twin brother. He even abandoned his family, to live and train like a mystical nomad, sort of like Cain on Kung Fu, or any number of angsty martial arts protagonists.

It makes sense for Well Go USA to try to build the Chilean Zaror into the next big martial arts superstar. He is recognizable from the John Wick franchise and lacks the baggage of many of his colleagues or competitors from Hong Kong and Mainland China. Speaking solely for myself, I will no longer be covering films starring Donnie Yen or Jackie Chan. They have endorsed 7.5 million of their fellow Hongkongers losing their freedom to curry favor with the CCP. This makes them traitors to their homeland and total sell-outs. It is simply not acceptable.

That brings us back to Zaror, who has tremendous skills and an imposing screen presence. He might have to work on developing more leading man charisma, but the trippy, spiritual vibe of Fist shrewdly fits his muscular, bird-of-prey-like physicality. He can fight like crazy and brood like a house on fire. Yet, he clearly establishes very distinct personas for El Guerrero and Gemelo.

Stealing Rodin, on OVID.tv

It wasn't exactly a caper that would impress Raffles. In 2005, a thief basically walked out of Santiago’s Palace of Fine Arts with a Rodin sculpture on loan from Paris. It was a crime of opportunity and according to the perpetrator, a work of performance art. Somehow, almost all the talking heads sort of buy that in Cristobal Valenzuela Berrios’s documentary, Stealing Rodin, which premieres Friday on OVID.tv.

Luis Emilio Onfray Fabres just happened to walk out of the museum with Rodin’s Torso of Adele, during a reception, because nobody stopped him. To be fair, he returned it in less than a day. Apparently, he was quite taken aback by the resulting media furor and the potentially dire consequences for Chile’s standing with major international art museums. The whole point was to get people to appreciate it, in-a-heart-grows-fonder kind of way. Indeed, several commentators compare his Rodin theft to that of the Mona Lisa, which made the Da Vinci painting’s legend.

It is true attendance for the Rodin exhibit subsequently sky-rocketed. However, the film focuses solely on “L.E.O.F.’s” justifications. Nobody bothers to ask if any museum guards were fired as a result of the theft or how much the Museum’s insurance premiums were increased. The heart definitely grows fonder for lost jobs and operating revenue.

Granted, art thieves have developed a bit of a romantic reputation in films and novels, but taking great works of art out of museums, where the public can see them, is not progressive. In many ways, Stealing Rodin reflects what is wrong with contemporary documentaries and journalism in general. It focuses on its chosen “narrative” and never tracks the unintended consequences. (Honestly, we need more economists making docs.)

Sundance ’20: Lost Girls & Mole Agent

Hitchcock loved putting average everymen into breakneck thrillers. To a large extent, that is what happens to the three protagonists of three standout films for mystery thriller fans that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. They also happen to be stories grounded in reality, but the circumstances of each are vastly different.

One of the best films of any genre at this year’s Sundance was Dominic Cooke’s Ironbark, which featured the festival’s most classically Hitchcockian hero, Greville Wynne, the real-life British businessman who was recruited to make contact with a highly-placed Soviet mole, as an amateur spy, completely unaware of the greater stakes involved. Full review here.

Liz Garbus’s Lost Girls is also directly based on a true story, but rather than playing a grand game of espionage, Mari Gilbert finds herself in a harrowing nightmare when her daughter Shannan disappears, presumably because she is another victim of the Long Island Serial Killer (a.k.a. Craig’s List Killer). Based on Robert Kolker’s well-received true crime account, Lost Girls follows Gilbert’s campaign to shame the Suffolk County police in to conducting a more thorough investigation, as well as her own free-lance efforts.

The problem is the cops on the case are not particularly motivated to investigate the serial murder of prostitutes like Shannan, nor are they inclined to dig too deeply in the gated community where she was last seen. The fact that the victims came from families decidedly on the lower end of the socio-economic and educational spectrums does not help either. Mari Gilbert is the roughest of family-support group, but she is also the toughest. Police Commissioner Richard Dormer starts to grudgingly respect her, so he might even start pushing the investigation a little.

In many ways, the Craig’s List killings were similar to Robert Pickton’s prostitute murders depicted in Rachel Talay’s On the Farm, but at least the Vancouver serial killer was eventually brought to justice. The Long Island murders remain unsolved, which necessarily implies an unsatisfying conclusion for Lost Girls. Yet, Amy Ryan’s withering intensity as Gilbert and the world-weary sadness Gabriel Byrne brings to Dormer still make Lost Girls deeply compelling. In fact, screenwriter Michael Werwie manages to shape the material into a surprisingly suspenseful narrative, while Garbus nicely balances the socially conscious anger with gritty procedural elements.

Mr. Sergio is sort of a spy like Wynne, but he is even more ordinary than Gilbert. He also happens to be a spry 83-years-old, which makes him the perfect candidate to go undercover as a nursing home resident in Maite Alberdi’s Chilean documentary, The Mole Agent.

Raul Ruiz’s The Wandering Soap Opera

You have to give the Chilean auteur Raul Ruiz credit for being so admirably prolific in death. Night Across the Street released shortly after his demise, whereas Ruiz’s wife and frequent collaborator Valeria Sarmiento used his pre-production work to helm The Lines of Wellington, taking sole directorial credit. His “latest” film is more of a rediscovery. Unlike suspiciously posthumous novels released years after the supposed author’s death, Ruiz helmed these satirical interconnected vignettes at the peak of his powers in 1990, so Sarmiento only had to edit them together per his intentions. The hardest part was finding the lost film of the experimental workshop sessions. Your feelings on experimental workshops will be a strong indicator of how much or how little you will enjoy Ruiz’s The Wandering Soap Opera when it opens today in New York.

Soap Opera was filmed in 1990, when Ruiz returned to Chile during the early days of the democratic reforms. Not surprisingly, there are political references littered throughout the film, but many will be stubbornly murky for outsiders to interpret. On the other hand, most of the comedy sending up the conventions and clichés of telenovelas is easy to get. Essentially, the figures we see on screen are mostly characters on telenovelas, but some are telenovela characters who are watching other telenovelas characters. In one case, the telenovela is even interrupted by an actress asking the characters how she could get cast to be on their show.

This all sort of gives the film a Russian doll structure, but it lacks the Borgesian bravura of Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room or even Ruiz’s masterful Mysteries of Lisbon. It also logically follows that some mini-arcs will be stronger than others. By far the funniest sequence chronicles an endless cycle of rival leftist rebels killing each other and issuing stilted statements, before getting gunned down in turn. However, there are several sequences involving overwrought middle-aged characters (often former political exiles) sitting around parlors exchanging purple dialogue that start to blend together.

Not surprisingly, there is an off-the-cuff raggedness to Wandering that is part of its charm. It was a time of change. Ruiz and his cast and crew were obviously delighted to have the opportunity to work together and address issues of exile, resistance, and religion openly. It is just somewhat surprising they did not have more to say.

Even though it only runs a modest 78 minutes, a little of Wandering goes a long way. After 40 minutes, most viewers will get everything there is to get. There are amusing moments sprinkled throughout, but it is definitely a decidedly uneven viewing experience. Those with mainstream tastes and preferences should be strongly cautioned: The Wandering Soap Opera is only for patrons of the avant-garde who will forgive its excesses for the sake of its politics. Recommended for the one-percent of the population that loves to use the term “one-percent” derisively, The Wandering Soap Opera opens today (5/17) in New York, at Anthology Film Archives.

Neighboring Scenes ‘19: The Wolf House

If the animators, the Brothers Quay had made Colonia instead of Florian Gallenberger, Emma Watson and Daniel Bruhl, it would have been a much better film. It might have looked a little bit like this film, but not exactly so, because nothing else looks exactly like the remarkable debut animated feature of artists Joaquin Cocina & Cristobal Leon. They plunge viewers into a nightmarish world of fairy tales and Chilean history in The Wolf House, which screens during this year’s Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American Cinema.

Maria Wehrle was punished severely for allowing three little pigs to escape from her German crypto-Christian commune clearly modeled after the Pinochet-supporting Colonia Dignidad, so she follows their example. However, the pastor, a.k.a. the Big Bad Wolf, kept a close eye on her, as his narration explains. After finding refuge a mega-archetypal cottage in the woods, Wehle is reunited with two of her fugitive pigs, whom her fevered mind morphs into children for her to look after. Alas, things take a rather dark turn when they run out of food.

That is sort of the narrative gist of Wolf House, but not really. Story is definitely secondary to Cocina and Leon. They are more concerned with creating a nightmarish world, which they hand-crafted from raw materials as part of gallery installations throughout several countries. This is an extraordinarily macabre manifestation of stop-motion animation that bears comparison to the Quays and Jan Svankmaker. In some ways, it could considered the stop-motion equivalent of some of Terry Gilliam and Bill Plympton’s trippier work.

It is not just the frequently disturbing sight of characters being built up from the inside-out and then broken down again that will unnerve viewers. The Lobo Casa is a decidedly creepy place that would not be out of place in Calvin Reeder’s The Oregonian, which basically gives the audience an all too vivid idea of what Hell looks like (if you haven’t seen it, don’t). The art direction, credited to Cocina, Leon, and Natalia Geisse is impressive, but punishing.

Yes, it is dark and grotesque, but The Wolf House represents some extraordinarily detailed and immersive world-building. Cocina and Leon slyly evoke Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs, without getting slavishly bogged down in analogies. They also might jolly well be onto something when they suggest there is something sinister about a way of life that values security over freedom. Absolutely not for children, The Wolf House is recommended for adventurous animation connoisseurs when it screens this Saturday (2/23) at the Walter Reade, as part of Neighboring Scenes.

If You Can Screen It There: Plants

Graphic novels and manga can be helpful. During trying times, they can be a source of distraction, or perhaps even a forewarning of danger. A series about body-snatching sentient flora will at least provide the former to a moody fan girl in Roberto Doveris’s Plants (trailer here), which screens this Thursday as part of Anthology Film Archive’s ongoing series, If You Can Screen It There: Premiering Contemporary Latin American Cinema.

Florencia (Flor) is clearly going through a rough patch. Her brother Sebastián (Seba) rests at home, but persists in a vegetative state, while her mother is hospitalized with a potentially life-threatening illness. Her father lives abroad and remains intentionally out of touch, so the once-privileged family now faces desperate financial circumstances. Forced to let go their live-in nurse, Flor must care for her brother herself. On the positive side, this gives her carte blanche to cut class whenever she feels like it.

It is too bad Doveris is not really telling the story of the Las Plantas comic book-within-the-film, because it sounds like it would be a really cool riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He could also probably draw a fair degree of suspense out of the genre elements, judging from his simple but evocative handling of Flor’s dream sequences. Instead, he is more interested in teen angst—and boy is there plenty of that.

Before we go any further, it should be established Flor is seventeen-years-old, just like the kid in Call Me by Your Name and still a year shy of the Chilean age of consent. There is no question she is sexualized in Plants, but it is deliberately disturbing (rather than romanticized, as in Guadagnino’s film).

For the record, Argentine pop star Violeta Castillo is twenty-two years-old and truly remarkable as Flor. It is a bold performance, calibrated to discomfit viewers by punctuating her coy faux innocence with flashes of fierceness. Ironically, she receives the most effective support from Mauricio Vaca, who subtly suggests moments of pointed lucidity as the uncommunicative Seba. They both project hints of something dark and incestuous shared between the siblings.

Plants will leave viewers hungry for a sci-fi/horror film about parasitic vegetation. The audience should also be duly impressed by Castillo’s raw and gutsy screen debut. It probably has enough fandom references to have earned it considerable play at genre film festivals during past years, but not in the current, post-Kevin Spacey-Woody Allen climate. Recommended for edgy hipsters and Castillo’s fans, Plants screens this Thursday (12/14) at Anthology Film Archives, as part of If You Can Screen It There (but a lot of us might prefer to re-watch Little Shop of Horrors and Day of the Triffids instead).

Wisely Passed Over by the Academy: Neruda

Octavio Paz never ceased to admire Pablo Neruda as a poet, but he was profoundly disappointed in the Chilean’s unyielding adherence to Stalinism. No doubt, the Mexican Nobel Laureate would also be greatly troubled by Pablo Larraín ostensibly cinematic portrait and its eagerness to gloss the historical record. To its credit, the Academy’s foreign language division declined shortlist Chile’s official submission, Larraín’s bizarrely over-hyped Neruda, which opens today in New York.

By the late 1930s, the world generally understood the nature of the Moscow Show Trials, except for those who willfully maintained their ignorance. In 1946, Neruda still clung to his blinkered world view, which provided radical leftist President Gonzalez Videla a handy excuse when he turned on Neruda and the Communist Party, as part of power struggle to control the Chilean leftwing. Neruda, a sitting senator at the time, was exiled, becoming the toast of Soviet-aligned and fellow-traveling political circles.

In Larraín’s Borgesean distortion, before Neruda could reach the adoring receptions abroad, he spent months underground, eluding the Javert-like police prefect Oscar Peluchonneau, his nemesis and possible post-modern alter-ego. Frankly, Larraín’s film is not even competent hagiography, depicting Neruda as a nauseatingly self-indulgent hedonist, who spends more time in brothels than the average Game of Thrones character. Where is the late, great Philippe Noiret when we need him?

Neruda has been described as a film noir take on Neruda and his legend. That is apt enough if they mean the noir Terrence Malick had the decency to never make. If you enjoy overwrought, risibly puffed-up voiceovers than Neruda will be like having Christmas and the Super Bowl on the same day.

For the rest of us, Neruda is just embarrassingly self-important, self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, self-absorbed, and utterly un-self-aware. This is the sort of klutzy pretention critics would ordinarily snark off the screen, but in this case, it is protected by its extreme leftist ideology.

Sadly, Neruda is not competent enough in fundamental cinematic terms for its didacticism to become problematic. Wildly over-the-top in its ostentatious excesses, Neruda’s purple narration makes it a better fit for the MST3K reboot than the Oscars. Indeed, some of the ever so solemn passages cry out for Crow and Tom Servo to bring them crashing down to earth. Horribly over-praised, Neruda should be flatly dismissed when it opens today (12/16) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Redeemer: Marko Zaror Smites Bad Guys

You could say this former hitman runs a particularly effective faith-based initiative. He will seek out the unjustly victimized that are pure of heart, to rain down payback on those who wronged them. In many cases, the faithful do not even know he has taken on their causes. He simply hears their prayers and answers them in Ernesto Díaz Espinoza’s Redeemer (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

He was once a happily married killer by the name of Nicky Pardo, but he is now known simply as “The Redeemer.” He starts each morning with a refreshing round of Russian roulette. Every time he survives, he interprets it as sign the man upstairs still wants him to continue administering retribution in his name. Some really heavy business went down in his past, involving his nemesis, “The Scorpion.” Unbeknownst to the Redeemer, the Scorpion trails along after him, killing the innocent people the Redeemer set out to avenge, in elaborately Biblical fashion. That might sound terribly cruel, but he is not called the Scorpion because he likes to play patty-cake.

The Redeemer will have his work cut out for him when he blows into a seaside village dominated by a drug cartel. When he saves a sad sack fisherman from his drug trafficking tormentors, the syndicate essentially declares war on the vigilante. It will not work out so well for them, but it gives the Scorpion time to catch up with his prey.

When someone as hardnosed as the Redeemer offers you a chance to repent, you should probably take it. Conversely, taking him on is not such a hot idea, even you are part of a pack of six or seven thugs. Let’s face it, Redeemer is not the most sophisticated action film to strut into theaters, but holy cats, can Zaror fight. He has weird grappling style MMA moves like you have never seen before, all of which look awesome on screen. Frankly, Zaror never talks much, but he does not need to say a lot when his piercing eyes glower out from under his hoodie.

In many ways, Redeemer is like a throwback to the grittily effective but not exactly over-ambitious films that launched the careers of butt-kicking superstars like JCVD and even Bruce Lee. The narrative is a rather simplistic affair, intentional designed to keep out of the way of the action showcases (yet, somehow Espinoza manages to have three credit co-screenwriters. Seriously, how many scribes did it take to write “they squint at each other and then start fighting?”) It doesn’t matter. The martial arts is the thing in Redeemer, spectacularly choreographed by Zaror. In fact, there is a show-stopping one-on-one with a no-name henchman midway through the film that could easily stand as the climax of most action releases.

This is Zaror’s show, but José Luís Mósca is all kinds bad ass as the Scorpion, while American Noah Segan provides some legitimate, non-cringey comic relief as Bradock, the new Yankee cartel boss. It might be too unpolished for casual viewers, but for genre fans there is something refreshingly honest about a film like Redeemer. It is also one of the rare Chilean films old man Pinochet would probably have approved of. After all, what’s not to like about an ultra-devout vigilante? Recommended for action fans hungry for red meat, Redeemer opens this Friday (6/12) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

NYFF ’13: Gloria

Gloria is a musical name.  Hip readers will know Umberto Tozzi was topping the international charts long before his pop song was drastically re-written for Laura Branigan. The bittersweet lyrics of love heard in Tozzi’s original version will nicely suit the protagonist of Chile’s latest foreign language Oscar submission.  However, Van Morrison’s “Gloria” never factors in Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria (trailer here), which screens during the 51^st New York Film Festival.

Gloria Cumplido is no stranger to discos.  She often haunts them during singles nights.  The fifty-eight year-old divorcee always finds a dance partner for the night, but she is looking for something more substantial.  She thinks she might have found it in Rodolfo Fernández.  They catch each others’ eye across the dance floor and one thing duly leads to another. 

Happily, his charm does not evaporate in the morning.  In fact, he is rather determined to pursue a relationship with Cumplido, but he has issues.  His ex-wife and grown daughters are still unhealthily co-dependent and he continues to enable their behavior.  At least, that is the charitable interpretation.  Regardless, he gets distinctly flaky at the most inopportune times.

Gloria is small in scope and thin in narrative development, but it has a dynamite lead in Paulina García’s Cumplido. Refreshingly, she is nobody’s victim.  She is a woman of a certain age with a reasonable degree of sexual confidence, trying chart a third act for her life, now that her grown children are preoccupied with their own lives. García brings out her vulnerability, but consistently plays her smart and resilient, so we never lose patience with decisions.

There are a few laughs here and there (most memorably the odd cat creation story her housekeeper spins out of Noah’s Ark), but Gloria a serious film by-and-large, because it addresses some serious business—love and aging.  At times, Lelio is far too enamored with the daily routine of his central character, but he has a keen sense of how to use music.  When he finally unleashes Tozzi’s hit tune, it makes the moment.  He also shrewdly incorporates a rendition of Jobim’s “Waters of March,” whose lonesome imagery and hopeful spirit nicely reflects her alone-in-a-crowd experiences.

Lelio’s one hundred ten minute running time is far longer than it needs to be.  We would most likely get it just as well somewhere closer to ninety.  He probably fell in love with his character and lead actress, which is understandable.  She carries the film with her boldly revealing performance.  Those who have a phobic reaction to unvarnished nudity should be forewarned, but it will strongly resonate with viewers who identify with mature characters and their emotional circumstances.  Recommended respectfully (but not wildly enthusiastically) for the target audience, Gloria screens tonight (10/6) at the Walter Reade and tomorrow (10/7) at the Francesca Beale as a main slate selection of this year’s NYFF.

Sundance ’13: Crystal Fairy

Travel is broadening. You can discover exotic new ways to get high.  For an extraordinarily annoying American expat, Chile is all about one thing: San Pedro cactus.  Chile is welcome to keep him.  Still, he just might learn something from a hippy-dippy free spirit in Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy, which screens during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Did I mention how truly unpleasant it is to spend time with young Jamie?  Well, it is.  Nonetheless, three Chilean brothers befriend the self-centered, manic, immature drug-vacuum.  They are about to embark on a little Fear-and-Loathing road trip in search of some of that increasingly rare cactus to boil up and ingest on the beach.  However, Jamie complicates matters when he invites along wild child Crystal Fairy.  He will regret the overture as soon as he comes down from his coke bender.  While the brothers three try to make the best of it, Jamie acts like a complete jerkweed around his fellow American.  Yet somehow, there might be a thimble full of redemption lurking in the third act.

While Michael Cera still looks like a moppet, he is so convincingly irritating, it is rather amazing his management signed off on this Chilean escapade.  Were it not for the climatic emotional pay-off Silva handles with remarkable sensitivity, Crystal might sour viewers on Cera indefinitely.

Between Crystal Fairy and his class conscious The Maid, Silva is beginning to emerge as the maestro of the awkward situation.  He is also clearly willing to present his cast in a profoundly unflattering light.  Indeed, Jamie dubs Gaby Hoffman’s character “Crystal Hairy” for reasons that are vividly and repeatedly established.  The obvious exceptions are his three real life brothers, Agustín, José Miguel, and Juan Andrés, who all come across as decent chaps with sufficient hygiene.

Essentially, Crystal Fairy shows the dark side of the kooky, quirky characters that typically inhabit indie films.  Frankly, it is sort of a corrective to many other films that will play in Park City over the coming week, reminding viewers there are often rather unfortunate reasons behind eccentric behavior.  That is not nothing, but Silva forces the audience to sit through a lot of noise before it starts to get real.  Only recommended for viewers with little fondness for precious-sized indies or Cera, Crystal Fairy screens today (1/18), Wednesday (1/23), and Friday (1/25) in Park City, today (1/18) in Salt Lake, and tomorrow (1/19) in Ogden, as a World Cinema Dramatic Competition selection at this year’s Sundance.

NYFF ’12: Night Across the Street

Don Celso Barra is one of those film noir paper-pushers.  Waxing nostalgic, he is fully aware of his approaching retirement, in every sense, including the most permanent one.  Language and narrative will be twisted like pretzels in Raúl Ruiz’s final film, Night Across the Street (trailer here), which screens as a main slate selection of the 50th New York Film Festival.

Don Celso studies poetry with French expat Jean Giono (who seems to bear little resemblance to his Horseman on the Roof novelist namesake), with whom he has struck up a friendship of outsiders.  Over coffee, Barra tells the poet stories of his childhood, featuring characters (including Long John Silver) who inject themselves into the ostensive reality. 

Barra lives in a colorful boarding house worthy of a Chilean Tennessee Williams and works in a soul deadening office.  At least he still has his health, but not for long.  Barra has foretold his own death at the hands of an assassin acting out of passion rather than for mercenary reasons.  Is it a delusion, a foreshadowing of things to come, both, or neither?  It will be dashed hard to say with certainty, as Ruiz and Barra play their games with the viewers.

Indeed, it is tempting to conflate the auteur and his final protagonist.  Though Ruiz began development on Lines of Wellington (also screening at this year’s NYFF), it was his widow Valeria Sarmiento who ultimately helmed the film after his passing.  As a result, when Barra foretells his own death, it takes on obvious additional resonance.  Still, it is impossible to invest too much biographical significance in Street, given the eccentricity of Barra’s story.  With its Séances, the ghosts of Beethoven, and an excursion into the afterlife, it kind of has it all, but not necessarily in logical order.

The late great filmmaker leaves us with some amazing parting images, but viewers might want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.  It is easy to get lost in Street, especially since Ruiz’s leisurely pace does not exactly propel you along.  Still, Sergio Hernández projects the morose elegance perfectly befitting the unprepossessing Don Celso.

Sad yet playful, Street is like Inception for the art-house crowd.  While Ruiz over emphasizes the childhood flashbacks at the expense of the noir elements, his control of mood and atmosphere are always masterful.  Recommended for Borges readers (but not what you might call general audiences), Night Across the Street screens tomorrow (10/7) at Alice Tully Hall as part of the 2012 New York Film Festival.

Reading Proust in Chile: Bonsai

Modernist literature can be trouble.  It will ultimately undermine Julio and Emilia’s relationship, even though Marcel Proust brought them together in the first place.  Unfortunately, he suspects she was the one when looking back on their brief affair in Cristián Jiménez’s Bonsái (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

We are told right up front, one of the former lovers will die and the other will continue living a lonely existence.  As the film opens, Julio and Emilia have been apart eight years.  Sleepwalking through life, Julio interviews for a temp job typing a famous novelist’s longhand manuscript, but prices himself out of the gig.  However, when his neighbor and reluctant girlfriend Blanca shows an interest in the project, Julio starts faking it, passing off his writing as that of the celebrated Gazmuri.  He only learned the bare bones premise, which bears a certain resemblance to his ill-fated relationship with Emilia.

When they met as students of literature, Julio pretends to have read his Proust to impress her.  Reading out loud soon becomes a courtship ritual for them, but a passage from Macedonio Fernández lodges a subconscious impulse that will sabotage their short but intense romance.  While Bonsái seems to establish the objective reality of these flashback scenes, it still plants the seeds of doubt.  Indeed, déjà vu runs rampant as Julio thinly fictionalizes their star-crossed love (or so we assume).

Rather faithfully based on Alejandro Zambra’s novella, Bonsái’s Proust references are clearly not haphazard, consciously alerting viewers to the importance and fallibility of memory in Julio’s reveries.  The past (whether real or imagined scarcely matters) clearly hangs heavily over his present.

Jiménez’s approach is more graceful than gimmicky, preferring subtly to clunky post-modern gamesmanship.  However, the deliberate vacuity of Diego Noguera’s Julio and the self-absorption of his two lovers leave a bit of an emotional void at the heart of the picture.  Still, Hugo Medina, seen briefly as the crucial Gazmuri, brings a welcome zestfulness to the cerebral proceedings.

Rather than a love story, Bonsái is a meditative elegy for love lost.  Despite the problematic characters, there is something universal about their human failings.  A finely crafted director’s film, Bonsái would be a terrible date movie, but it is recommended for those who appreciate sophisticated narratives and Latin American cinema.  It opens this Friday (5/11) in New York at the IFC Center. 

NewFest ’11: My Last Round

Boxing and love can both cause severe brain damage. There is no question which is riskier. Get serious, it is obviously boxing. A fighter can be irreparably hurt in the ring. It could even be the death of one gay epileptic pugilist in Julio Jorquera’s My Last Round (trailer here), which screens during the 2011 NewFest.

Octavio Palooka is decent fighter, but he never really had his shot. A man’s man around the gym, he attracts the attention of ostensive ladies man Hugo. However, the younger kitchen worker initially panics when Octavio puts the moves on him. Eventually though, they launch into a furtive relationship. When Octavio’s latent epilepsy surfaces, the fighter is forced to retire from the ring. In a way, this clears the way for the two men to start a new life together in the big city of Santiago, where people mostly keep to themselves. Unfortunately, Jennifer, the daughter of Hugo’s new boss, is not one of those people. Yet, perhaps Octavio’s desire for one last Rocky moment will be a greater obstacle to their happily ever after.

Round desperately wants to be likened to Brokeback Mountain, but it bizarrely lifts the mournful circular ending from Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain, almost lock, stock, and barrel. It made perfectly tragic sense in the context of the Balkans’ endlessly repeating cycle of violence. In Round though, it is just kind of weird.

Arguably, Round works best when steeped in the grungy atmosphere of Octavio’s provincial gym. Jorquera’s focus is sharper and sensation of place is quite strong, whereas the big city scenes descend into rather plodding melodrama.

Perfectly cast as Octavio, Roberto Farías’ slow burning and deep yearning are quite compelling stuff. Conversely, Héctor Morales is just sort of okay as Hugo, presumably intended to be something of a cold fish and a cipher. However, Manuela Martelli brings out some human dimensions in the disruptive Jennifer.

Farías’ hardnosed intensity is impressive, but there is no question about the overall direction Round is heading, notwithstanding the concluding miscue. While it begs comparison to a number of A-list films, like The Fighter and The Wrestler, it just is not in their league. Pretty inescapably average overall, Round screens Sunday (7/24) at the Cinema Village as part of this year’s NewFest.

Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light

Chile’s Atacama Desert might be the closest place on Earth to the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. It is not just the arid sandy environment, but also the retro-futuristic looking observatories that dot the Atacama skyline. Extremely photogenic, they provide some striking visuals in Patricio Guzmán’s docu-essay Nostalgia for the Light (trailer here), winner of the Best Documentary Grand Prix at the 2010 European Film Awards, which opens this Friday in New York.

The Atacama has the world’s clearest skies and lowest humidity. It is a place uniquely suited for stargazing. However, for the essentially enslaved miners of the Nineteenth Century, it was an unforgiving locale. It was not any more pleasant for the political prisoners who were moved into their former digs during the tenure of Pinochet’s authoritarian government. Ironically, the Atacama’s low humidity and complete absence of precipitation are ideal for preserving bodies interred in its salty sands. As a result, while the astronomers study the heavens, committed family members scour the sands, hoping to find remnants of loved ones.

Truly, Nostalgia is meditative to a fault. At its finest, Guzmán approximates the vibe of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, allowing the astronomers to contemplate the nature of the universe in appropriately evocative settings. However, Guzmán overplays the metaphor of each plumbing the past, when comparing the survivors and archaeologists searching for bones to the astronomers recording astral light traveling through time and space from long dead stars.

A man of the hard left, Guzmán professes concern Chileans are deliberately oblivious to their own recent history. Yet, it is precisely the relatively recent revelations of the extent to which Allende and the KGB were in intimate collaboration that is scrupulously ignored by the media. Indeed, Pinochet clearly was not fooling around, but Chileans might have had it far worse. After recently screening films from and about North Korea for the KAFFNY, one suspects Kim Jong-il would consider the Pinochet regime rather indulgent for allowing the children and parents of his prisoners to remain at liberty. Everything is relative, even repression.

Guzmán and cinematographer Katell Djian capture some truly striking imagery. Indeed, it works best as an exotic travelogue, much like the real life science fiction of Into Eternity, which tours Finland’s Onkalo nuclear waste repository buried deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Ultimately, Nostalgia’s burnished look is impressive, but it is not nearly as profound as its accolades suggest. It opens this Friday (3/18) at the IFC Center.

Domestic Drama: The Maid

Raquel isn’t called a servant for nothing. She does all the menial chores the Valdes family cannot be bothered with. In return, she gets a measure of security and a nebulous sense of belonging within the household. It turns out that is enough to entitle her to act fairly crazy in Sebastian Silva’s Chilean drama The Maid (trailer here), which opens Friday in New York.

Raquel works like a dog and it seems to be taking a toll on her health. If not palatial, the Valdes’s house would probably be considered quite large by the standards of most Santiago residents. The Valdes children also keep Raquel jumping, particularly the surly teenaged daughter and a son in full throws of puberty. Pilar Valdes, the lady of the house, wants to hire additional help, but Raquel resists the suggestion, fearing competition for the family’s favor.

When her mistress finally hires a second maid, Raquel does not take it lying down, launching a cruel campaign of psychological warfare against Mercedes, an innocent country girl. Her successor, Sonia, the proverbial bitter old maid, puts up more of a fight, but ultimately fares little better against Raquel. However, when the tough, good-humored Lucy signs on, Raquel may have met her match.

The uneven Maid incorporates facets of many different film genres, without fully committing to any particular one. At times, a psychological drama seems to be unfolding, as Raquel plays her petty cat-and-mouse games. Yet, Silva never tries to build an atmosphere of suspense and keeps the mood relatively light, given the film's conflicts and neuroses. In a sense, it is a family drama, but it explicitly questions the legitimacy of Raquel’s position within the Valdes family unit.

Certainly, there are also aspects of the class-conscious social-issue film as Raquel tirelessly toils for Pilar, a lady who lunches, and her husband Mundo, who spends all his time playing golf and building model ships. Still, the Valdeses come across as more indulgent than exploitative, trying to lighten Raquel’s load while tolerating her sometimes questionable behavior.

Silva delights in discomfiting the audience with one uncomfortable scene after another. As a result, Catalina Saavedra deserves great credit for giving such an unselfconscious performance as Raquel. She keeps Raquel real and expresses her deeply concealed pain and insecurity. She also has several nude scenes, which is no selling point for the film. She is nicely counterbalanced by the vaguely Sarah Palin-looking Mariana Loyola, who brings much needed doses humor and energy to the deliberately awkward proceedings, as the likable Lucy.

Though Silva’s drably realistic style is nothing particularly noteworthy, he captures some very memorable screen performances. The Maid is an odd little film that really sticks in your head, but you’re not sure why. It opens this Friday (10/16) at the Angelika.

HFFNY: Radio Corazon

Would you tell your most transgressive sexual episodes to a Chilean in a tank top? Evidently, plenty of other Chileans do. Based on supposedly real calls to the Chilean radio show, Radio Corazón (Spanish trailer here), which screened at the Havana Film Fest NY, tells three stories of sexual intrigue, framed by scenes of Rumpy the host interacting with the callers from the studio.

"Initiation," the first story of Corazón, is meant to be a sort of sex farce, but it is highly problematic. A high school student is committed to losing her virginity before turning eighteen, but is not attracted to her classmates. When she discovers her step-father has been unfaithful to her mother, she attempts to blackmail him into sleeping with her. However, he extricates himself from this dilemma by giving her some alcohol and then having a co-worker impersonate him in bed. In Corazón, this psychologically perilous, potentially incestuous situation is presented in a smarmy American Pie style.

The second caller touches on similar themes, but “My Daughter-In-Law” is given a strictly serious treatment. When a career-minded Chilean neglects his new Argentinean fiancé, she finds support from his single mother. As the young couple’s relationship strains, she finds herself falling into a lesbian relationship with the mother of her intended. Rife with Oedipal implications, the second caller’s tale is presented as tragedy, not comedy. Yet the characters’ actions defy credibility, simply forcing viewers to watch uncomfortable situations unfold.

The final caller has the strongest story to tell, giving Corazón a measure of redemption. In “Fairy Tale,” we hear from Valeria, the former servant of wealthy landed family who tends to the children and the chronically ill lady of the manor. Knowing her time is short, the wife designates the nanny as her chosen successor, trusting her to care for her family in her absence.

Unlike the first two calls, the lead characters of this storyline, though subject to weaknesses, are essentially good people. It ends on an imperfect but satisfying note that is actually quite touching. It also features the strongest performances of the film, including Amparo Noguera as the ailing María Pilar and Tamara Acosta as the kind-hearted Valeria.

Obviously, the tone of Corazón changes drastically with each caller. The one consistency is Rumpy, who can be a bit annoying—think more of an unctuous Phil Donahue more than an outrageous Howard Stern shock jock.

Corazón is a flawed film. While it concludes with a very well written and powerfully acted storyline, its blithe treatment of provocative subject matter is at times unsettling. One wishes the other calls had matched the quality of the third act, but maybe that would not have been representative of the actual radio show. It must be an acquired taste.