Ibermedia at MoMA: I Miss You

It is nice to have a place to crash in Mexico, especially during a coup. Inevitably though, safety leads to guilt and restlessness for a young Argentine student whose brother has disappeared following the 1976 military coup. Coming of age is a bit more complicated in Fabian Hofman’s I Miss You (trailer here), which screens as part of Iberoamérican Images, MoMA’s continuing retrospective tribute to the Iberian and Latin American film consortium.

Javier’s brother Adrian is the popular one. He is currently serving a stint in the military as incompetently as he can, but his heart is with the leftist radicals. When the coup is launched he careens off in a flurry of mysterious activity—and then he is gone. Fearing Javier will suffer a similar fate, his parents pack him off to his uncle’s home in Mexico City. However, the exile makes his brother’s disappearance even harder for Javier to bear, making him feel truly helpless.

Javier’s family is actually Jewish, tracing its roots back to the Polish shtetls, but Miss treats this intriguing and potentially significant family history as an afterthought. (Surely, the dramatic implications of the descendant of Polish Jewry being rounded up by the government that systematically harbored German war criminals is hard to miss.) Yet, Hofman largely deemphasizes the political in favor of the personal, which is certainly a defensible strategy. Indeed, he almost entirely forgoes the requisite scenes of paramilitary squads ominously marching through the streets of Buenos Aires. Nor is Miss especially flattering in its depiction of the would-be leftist revolutionaries, who come across as more pose than poise.

Miss works best portraying how the extraordinary circumstances of Adrian’s disappearance intensifies and exacerbates the fractures within his family. This is particularly pronounced with Javier’s Alzheimer’s-stricken grandmother, whose preference for Adrian becomes increasingly obvious through his absence.

While undeniably sympathetic, Fermín Volcoff’s Javier pushes viewer limits for sullenness. Although it is unequivocally a young person’s film, its soul is clearly represented by Luis Ziembrowski, as the tragically bourgeoisie and understandably anguished father, Renan. In a pleasant surprise, Ana Ofelia Murguia’s work as Javier’s grandmother is one of the most honest and effective portrayals of a dementia in recent years, tantalizingly suggesting moments of lucidity, only to cruelly revert to form.

Though Hofman is rather workmanlike in his approach, he nicely capitalizes on the photogenic Mexican backdrops. Despite the political subject matter, he never indulges in didacticism or score-settling. It is a very personal film, but it spans three Latin American countries (the third being Uruguay), so the support of the multi-national Ibermedia was probably quite valuable. A small but engaging film, Miss is worth seeing when it screens this Sunday (12/11) and the following Wednesday (12/14) during MoMA’s Ibermedia retrospective, Iberoamérican Images.

Ibermedia at MoMA: La Yuma

At the current exchange rate, a million dollar baby would be about 22,895,000 Cordoba in Nicaragua. Don’t call for aspiring boxer Virginia “La Yuma, the Wildcat” Roa that. She is not exactly Rocky either. Still, she intends to fight her way out of the Managua barrio in Florence Jaugey’s La Yuma (trailer here), a Nicaraguan production supported by Ibermedia, which screens as part of Iberoamérican Images, MoMA's retrospective tribute to the Iberian and Latin American film consortium.

La Yuma is in with a gang, but he heart is in boxing. Waging a cold war with her mother’s loutish live-in boyfriend, her home life is not great, but it fuels her training. Her punk brother does not make things any easier. Yet, he inadvertently precipitates her class-spanning romance when Yuma returns a computer disk to Ernesto, the university student he mugged. With one of Managua’s top trainers taking her on, things appear to be on track for Yuma, but the gang still considers her one of their own.

While not a boxing film in the tradition of Cinderella Man, La Yuma does not cheat fans of the gentlemanly art of self-defense, including one full length four-round amateur bout, as well as a generous helping of sparring. The “Wildcat,” played by Alma Blanco, is an engaging underdog, small but quick, with convincing technique and footwork. She is quite a good romantic lead as well, tough and tender in her scenes with Ernesto.

Indeed, Blanco has star power, but her partner, not so much. However, Eliézer Traña has an undeniable presence as Yader, her former trainer, an unusually well developed platonic best friend character, who also offers something for the ladies as a part-time cut-rate Chippendale dancer.

La Yuma is gritty and naturalistic, but Jaugey wisely resists the temptation to revel in the meanness of the barrio. Rather, she keeps things moving along at a healthy clip. In fact, she throws the audience a third act curve ball that might confuse some viewers (since it leaves many subplots unresolved), but is actually quite satisfying.

Jaugey’s film would make an interesting pairing with Gerardo Chijona Valdes’ Ticket to Paradise, which also screens during the Ibermedia retrospective at MoMA. In both films, young protagonists adopt unconventional strategies to get out of their present circumstances. However, both the conditions and method of escape are far more desperate in 1980’s Cuba than contemporary Nicaragua. A visceral portrait social menace and decay, Ticket is not exactly effective propaganda for the current regime, so presumably the support of Ibermedia must have been instrumental to its production.

Sort of a film of empowerment, but in a scrupulously realistic way, La Yuma is definitely recommended when it screens again this Thursday (12/8). Ticket is also well worth seeing when it screens this Friday (12/9) and the following Sunday (12/11) as part of Iberoamérican Images, now underway at MoMA.

Ibermedia at MoMA: Of Love and Other Demons

Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s prose has been lauded for their visual quality. A screenwriter and film critic in his own right, García Márquez’s work has inspired many films around the world. Yet, the magical realism he is renowned for is devilishly difficult to realize on screen. However, Hilda Hidalgo makes quite a credible job of it adapting García Márquez’s Of Love and Other Demons (trailer here), Costa Rica’s official submission for last year’s best foreign language Oscar race, which screens today at MoMA as part of Iberoamérican Images, a retrospective tribute to the multinational, intergovernmental Spanish and Portuguese language film consortium, Ibermedia.

Left to the servants to rear, Sierva María is a quiet, earthy child. While she often communes with nature, her affinity does not extend to rabid dogs. When she contracts the disease as a logical result of a bite, the church and the compliant civilian administration conclude she is possessed by the Devil. Consigned to a convent specializing in such cases, her only visitor is the young priest, Cayetano Delaura.

Despite being a relatively permissive Jesuit, the Bishop has assigned Delaura to the case in hopes that a successful exorcism will hasten his advancement. It is a difficult task for him, because neither his heart nor mind agrees with the nuns’ harsh treatment. Of course, he also falls in love with his twelve year-old charge, which is certainly problematic for contemporary viewers (but perhaps not so much during the early Spanish Colonial years). He is still a priest though, yet somehow Hidalgo largely glosses over potential audience objections with imagery that is pretty and suggestive rather than jarring.

Cinematographer Mariana Rodríguez employs dark shadows and warm glowing light in a manner that suggests the chiaroscuro effect in great oil paintings. Likewise, art director Juan Carlos Acevedo’s design team creates a vivid sense of place with grand backdrops, stately in their decay. Indeed, Demons is a rich work of visual artistry, but does it ever hate the Church. Frankly, the Bishop cannot win for losing in the film, which positions him as an even greater villain for punishing Delaura for his relationship with Sierva María (yet, has not the Church been under fire in recent years for not decisively responding to roughly similar scandals?)

If a bit clumsy when offering commentary on the Church and colonialism in general, Hidalgo excels at handling the film’s elements of magical realism, such as the presumptive witch in the cell next to Sierva María,, who we assume visits the girl in her dreams each night. It is hard to say with certainty though, so adept is the blurring of reality in Demons.

Young Eliza Triana shows tremendous poise and range, by turns ferocious and vulnerable, as Sierva María. Quietly compelling as the doubt-wracked Jesuit, Pablo Derqui does his best not to look creepy in his key scenes with Triana. While most of the supporting players are essentially stock figures, including several judgmental nuns and kindly servants, Joaquín Climent brings out surprising emotional depth in the Marqués, Sierva María’s remorseful absentee father.

A finely crafted period drama, Demons is a striking example of Ibermedia’s financing and production acumen. Subtle in some ways, but not it others, it is definitely memorable, well worth seeing this afternoon (12/3) or this Wednesday (12/7). Centenarian Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angélica also screens during the series, making an interesting counterpoint to Demons, with a very different case of supernaturally star-crossed attraction. It is love beyond the grave that Case depicts in oddly upbeat and endearing terms when a photographer falls under the spell of a recently deceased young woman, whose ethereal beauty he is summoned to capture for posterity. A lovely, deceptively simple film, Case is highly recommended when it screens this Sunday (12/4) and the following Saturday (12/10) during the Iberoamérican Images series at MoMA.