VEFFNY ’16: Normal (short)

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.

Nina Rancel and Slavko Sorman look convincingly exhausted and develop the chemistry of a couple with painfully fractious history together. Lasca cranks up the claustrophobic discomfort, while instilling a perilous sense that all Hell is literally breaking loose outside. It looks deceptively simple, yet it is technically quite accomplished. Very highly recommended, Normal screens this Thursday (9/15) as part of the 2016 VEFFNY’s New Venezuelan Perspectives I short film block at the Syndicated Bar Theater Kitchen in Brooklyn.

VEFFNY ’16: Los 8-6

One of the drawbacks to leading a neighborhood gang is that everyone knows who you are. That was especially true of El Chino, whose titular outfit ran the Cotiza neighborhood of Caracas in the mid-1980s. Everybody knew him and usually had a good idea where to find him, including his girlfriend’s cousin, who was a top lieutenant in a rival gang. The new police death squad will also have a good idea of his whereabouts in Francisco Javier Mujica’s Los 8-6, which screens during the 2016 Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

El Chino is one bad cast. Yesenia’s cousin Morocho also thinks he is pretty tough, but he is not in the same league. That is why she frequently beseeches El Chino not to kill the dumb kid, but that is not the sort of guarantee he is inclined to grant, especially not now.

After consolidating their hold on Cotiza, the 8-6 suddenly find themselves fighting a two-front war against Morocho’s gang and the newly formed special off-the-books police commando squad. This is probably not the best time to take down a big score, but El Chino does so anyway. That just adds a big bag of destabilizing cash into to the equation.

With no disrespect intended towards Mujica, Los 8-6 illustrates what colleagues have said about creative writing programs they have run in prisons. Every inmate writes the same story about a drug deal gone bad, but some of those stories are still really darned compelling. Mujica’s story is respectably middling.

Frankly, the most distinctive part of the film is El Chino’s dysfunctionally fiery relationship with Yesenia. It seems like they are always fighting, yet we can also feel the constant underlying heat. Logically, Ernesto Ceballos and Martha Tarazona are the standouts as Chino and Yesenia. To be fair, the entire cast is completely professional and thoroughly believable. They are simply not playing strongly defined characters.

We have definitely seen this sort of thing before, usually executed with a more colorful cast of characters. We can admire Mujica’s gritty integrity, but Los 8-6 still very much feels like a shopworn story, like the retold tale of the drug deal gone bad. Still, its workmanlike quality makes it watchable. Genre fans who want to support the festival have surely seen worse gangster films. It just isn’t special in any noteworthy way. Kind of an “eh,” Los 8-6 screens this Thursday (9/15), at the Village East, as part of this year’s VEFFNY.

VEFFNY ’16: El Malquerido

It is tempting to dub Felipe Pirela the Venezuelan Jerry Lee Lewis, because of his marriage to thirteen-year-old Mariela Montiel. Yet somehow he got off easy in the national media, at least initially. It is pretty clear why. In terms of record sales, he was the Venezuelan Elvis and the effect of his romantic boleros could lead some to call him the Venezuelan Sinatra. However, their ill-advised union leads to bad karma over time in Diego Rísquez’s bio-pic, El Malquerido (trailer here), which screens as the opening night film of the 2016 Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

While mounting his zillionth comeback, Pirela will tell his story on a Puerto Rican talk show, thereby supplying Rísquez’s flashback framing device. By this time, Pirela had declared Venezuela off-limits, for reasons we will soon understand. His early years follow a familiar pattern. Little Felipe croons for his adoring mother, who gets him a spot on a talent discovery radio show through s friend of a friend. Of course, he is a hit, generating increasingly professional gigs, until he signs with Billo Frómeta’s orchestra as a young man. His popularity explodes during his tenure with old beloved Billo, like Frank Sinatra’s stint with the Tommy Dorsey band. Inevitably, he goes solo, but that looks like a mistake in retrospect.

In the short term, Pirela makes a mountain of money. In the long term, he is doomed to sabotage himself. Montiel’s scoldy mother will also do her best to help. Frankly, there is something comforting about Pirela’s story, because it reassures us Latin American superstars are just as likely to fatally succumb to sex and drugs as the American and British rockstars we are more familiar with.

So yes, we know exactly where El Malquerido is headed, but the little, culturally specific details make it a rewarding ride anyway. Samantha Castillo does not have a lot of screen time, but she still manages to steal the picture as the legendary La Lupe, who sings with Pirela and offers him some advice he should have taken more seriously.

Jesús Chino Miranda is surprisingly sullen as Pirela, but it usually fits the dramatic context of his life. Natalia Roman gives the film an energy lift as Paquita, the Puerto Rican lover he should have been more faithful to (in jazz terms, she was the Cicely Tyson to his Miles Davis). However, it is hard to fathom how Greisy Mena’s Montiel could inspire such scandal given her mousy screen presence.

Pirela could sing a bolero and Billo could lead a band, so there is no shortage of distinctive music throughout the film. Considering how popular he clearly was, it is surprising he does not have more crossover recognition today, like Celia Cruz and La Lupe herself, but the part where he dies prematurely at thirty-one obviously did not help. Like a good bandleader, Rísquez keeps the drama snappy and showcases plenty of well-chosen tunes. Recommended for bolero fans, El Malquerido screens this Wednesday (9/14), at the Village East, as the opener of this year’s VEFFNY.