Spanish Cinema Now ’12: The Dream and the Silence

Oriol is an architect, but he is terrible at rebuilding broken things, like his family.  At least he is carrying on just fine.  Not only has he forgotten the accident that killed his youngest daughter, he has blotted out all memory of little Celia.  It might sound like the set-up for a psychological drama, but traditional narrative form is not something Jaime Rosales gets hung up on with his pseudo-experimental The Dream and the Silence (trailer here), which screens during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2012 Spanish Cinema Now.

Oriol and Yolanda are two very unexceptional parents with two perfectly presentable daughters, Alba and Celia.  That all changes on the fateful day Oriol drives Celia back from her grandparents’ home.  The architect’s mental block might help him deal with the situation, but it makes matters far worse for Yolanda, who as a result feels added pressure to keep Celia’s memory alive.  As her emotions fray, Oriol becomes more distant and disengaged in family life.  From time to time, the audience witnesses extreme situations that could have been the stuff of genre cinema, but are presented by Rosales in a diffuse, roundabout manner instead.

Take a deep breath before walking into Dream, because it is described by the sympathetic as “demanding.”  Like high-end mumblecore, Rosales employs a highly improvisational approach with mostly nonprofessional cast.  While it sometimes takes a while to tease out what is going on in a given situation, viewers will get a keen sense of the personalities that make up this family.  Jaume Terradas is especially powerful as the grandfather who was one of the last people to see Celia alive.  When bickering with his wife and later mourning a grandchild, his weathered face commands the screen.

At times though, Rosales appears to be fighting his actors with his stylistic excesses. Granted, he frames some striking tableaux, but they lose some of their potency when held too long.  As for the Godardian jump-cuts, they are an unnecessary distraction.  Still, Óscar Durán’s black-and-white cinematography is unusually powerful, better described as stark rather than beautiful.  For added intellectual heft, the film is bookended by scenes of work by Miguel Barcelo (seen in The Double Steps) taking shape on his canvas.

Without question, Dream is a festival film that is unlikely to see any regular theatrical bookings in America, except perhaps in the ever daring Anthology Film Archives, God bless them.  There is a there there, but there is also plenty of meandering slack.  Visually distinctive but indulgently elliptical, Dream and Silence is only for cineastes that privilege image over narrative.  It screens this coming Thursday (12/13) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of this year’s Spanish Cinema Now.

SFIFF ’12: The Double Steps

Francois Augiéras definitely painted for posterity.  After vandals destroyed a set of his desert bunker murals, he painted another, deliberately burying all signs of it in the sand.  The European expatriate painter would only trust future generations to respect his work.  Both a fictional Malawian and Spain’s leading contemporary artist Miguel Barceló search for those lost murals in Isaki Lacuesta’s odd hybrid The Double Steps (trailer here, which screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 San Francisco International Film Society.

Augiéras does not appear directly in Steps, but his spirit appears to inhabit Abdallah Chambaa, a former soldier, mustered out of service by his commanding officer uncle, with whom he was involved in an incestuous relationship.  Chambaa soon becomes as bandit, as former soldier often do, but he also has a compulsion to paint.  Periodically, Steps also follows Barceló in real life Mali, producing new work inspired by Augiéras and searching for the legendary murals.

Frankly, Steps is probably more interesting to read and write about than to watch.  In no way should it be thought of as Raiders of the Lost murals.  Feverish in tone, it has a loose narrative, featuring frequent shifts in time that are sudden, yet ill-defined.  Lacuesta also simultaneously shot a documentary about Barceló that probably offers more of the historical and artist context many viewers might be wondering about.

Lacuesta’s hazy style keeps his cast at an emotional arm’s length from the audience.  At least Diego Dussuel’s breath-taking cinematography somewhat pulls them back in, capturing the rugged beauty of Mali’s landscape, especially the cliffs Barceló explores looking either for Augiéras’ murals or his own inspiration.  Steps is a film anyone seriously dealing with art cinema will eventually have to take into account, making it a completely appropriate, even valuable, programming selection for the festival.  However, those looking for an unpretentious film to get caught up in should probably look elsewhere. 

 

In fact, there are some great films to choose from at this year’s SFIFF, including the inspiring and infuriating Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Hong Sang-soo’s characteristically clever The Day HeArrives, the intriguing interconnected German trilogy Dreileben, the outstanding documentary-lament for Cambodian cinema Golden Slumbers, Mohammad Rasoulof’s timely but intimate Goodbye, the surprisingly effective true story of French injustice Guilty, the breezy profile of the festival’s honored guest Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, the cerebral science fiction fable Target, Andrea Arnold’s challenging adaptation of WutheringHeights, and Carol Reed’s always classic The Third Man.  Undoubtedly an interesting work best appreciated self-selecting cineastes, The Double Steps also screens again tonight (4/24) as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.