VEFFNY ’15: Alone (Solo)

Tomas’ blind son Lucas has what they used to call the shine, so he ought to pay more attention to the lad. Unfortunately, he is not home enough to hear his spooky premonitions. Instead, he is too busy plotting a dodgy scheme that will give him enough money to abscond from his family with his wife’s troubled younger sister. However, you do not need second sight to predict bad things for the half-baked plan he hatches in José Ramon Novoa’s Alone (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Tomas is a junior military officer assigned to the docks. As a result, he knows full well his Colonel is up to his neck in drug trafficking. He is less than thrilled when the Colonel’s people browbeat him into storing a big shipment on his docks, but refusal would hurt his chance for promotion. However, all that illicit merchandise gives him ideas when his sister-in-law Glenda blows back into town. There is a good reason why his wife Teresa is less than thrilled by her return. Clearly, she and Tomas were once carrying on quite the torrid affair.

Instead of just picking up where they left off, Tomas would like to start a new life with Glenda. To kick it off in style, Tomas plans to steal the Colonel’s shipment and make his own deal with Yusef, the distributor. Conveniently, Tomas is uniquely well positioned to assemble all the necessary paperwork to facilitate the shipping and handling of a big barrel full of drugs. Yet, he seems to lack the instinct necessary to really pull off a score like this.

Alone might sound like your garden variety angsty crime drama, but its third act twist is extraordinarily twisted. There is also a long, tripped out hallucinatory centerpiece sequence that has to be seen to be believed. This is not the film you think you are settling in for, not by a long shot. Still, it pointedly illustrates just how severe karma can be to those who plan to abandon their spouses and children. We’re talking major blowback here.

Laureano Olivares is appropriately beefy and weirdly naïve as Tomas. He is human and fallible enough to maintain our interest, but also sufficiently self-centered and impulsive to prevent his woes from causing viewers any serious concern. On the other hand, it is hard to get Samantha Dagnino’s Glenda as a fatal femme fatale, especially given her self-destructive behavior. However, as Lucas, Wilson A. Peña Nelo exhibits a haunting presence that deserved more screen time.

At times, Alone is betrayed by its budget constraints, but when Ramon Novoa drops his big climatic shoe, it leaves a mark. It is the sort of film that leaves the audience muttering well after the screening. Indeed, it is completely its own film. Worth seeing for its grubby audacity, Alone screens this Saturday night (9/26) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

VEFFNY ’15: Seal of Confession

Corrupt politicians and petroleum interests have conspired to kill a remote community of indigenous Venezuelans. It sure is food for thought the next time Joe Kennedy offers you some free heating oil. Regardless, a renegade cop and a priest taking confession will learn the truth about the nefarious business, but their responses will be drastically different in Henry Rivero’s Seal of Confession (trailer here), which was scheduled to screen as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York, but now appears to have been dropped.

Be that as it may, Humberto Restrepo has more than enough anger management issues to get him suspended. If they also knew he had regular visions of his dead copper father that would probably spell the end of his career. Technically, his career on the force is already kaput, but that is because he accepted an off-the-books, deep cover assignment infiltrating a group of paramilitary vigilantes, who also do the bidding of the crooked Sen. Ruiz.

However, for the real heavy lifting, Ruiz sends in Enrique, the hitman’s hitman. On a lark, the contract killer wanders into the confessional of Ruiz’s brother, Father Juan. He has plenty to confess, but his confession is probably not sincere. Despite the title, he will not leave Father Juan to wrestle with his vows, like Montgomery Clift in I Confess. If anyone is taking down the Senator, it will be Restrepo, or possibly the guilt-wracked, emotionally imploding politician himself.

Let’s be frank, Seal is just okay at best. Rivero introduces scores of extraneous characters, whom he awkwardly marches in and out of the narrative. Nor is it ever clear how “real” we should consider the scenes with Restrepo and his father’s ghost. However, Luigi Sciamanna is legitimately terrific as Sen. Ruiz and that sort of remorseful, angst-ridden villain is a relatively original character type.

Jorge Cao also plays Father Juan with refreshing dignity and looks like a convincing Ruiz sibling. Marlon Moreno’s cold-blooded vibe works well enough for the ruthless Enrique, but poor Juan Pablo Raba seems to be hiding in Restrepo’s rum bottles. He is way too sullen and reserved for a hardboiled leading role.

So yes, Seal is a real hodge-podge of a film. Rivero largely loses control of the proceedings, but at least he maintains a consistently dark and cynical tone. Sciamanna and Cao also give us something to watch, even when everything around them hardly makes any sense. It’s a head-shaker at times, which maybe explains why it disappeared from the line-up of the this year's Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

VEFFNY ’15: Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell

Captain Gaspar Mendoza was on the winning side of the revolution. He saw plenty of war, but his conscience does not trouble him, at least not very much. However, he seems highly dependent on a talismanic charm. It does not seem to work so well judging from his daughter’s ill health and the severe draught plaguing the land. Yet, that is nothing compared to the distress headed his way in Julián Balam’s Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

The Captain’s daughter María Eugenia has not had a sound night’s sleep in months. Fearing for her sanity, her mother insists on her long-deferred baptism, to which Mendoza reluctantly agrees. Rather ominously, the ceremony is interrupted by the discovery of a young thief. He is a surly looking waif, but María Eugenia takes a shine to him anyway. Mendoza’s old lieutenant wants to deal with him in the age old manner, but the Captain humors his daughter. Supposedly, the boy will be put to work, but he acts like he has the run of the place.

He will indeed be a destabilizing influence on the estate, particularly with María Eugenia. She starts acting out and asking awkward questions about the past, including the exploits of the Keyser Söze figure, whose grave mysteriously appeared in the parish cemetery—or so the legend goes.

If you are not crazy about kids you will actively dislike “El Niño,” played with a defiant lack of subtlety by the young thesp. He is just a little Hellion, even if you can guess his grisly backstory. No question about it, Mendoza’s right-hand man had the right idea. Frankly, it is hard to accept María Eugenia’s affection for him, even if we make allowances for supernatural forces working upon her.

On the other hand, Alberto Alifa’s Mendoza is a grandly tragic figure. He projects the right military bearing, even when his world is collapsing around him. Balam and the design team also crank up the gothic atmosphere, centering the drama with a very dark, humid sense of place. Even before the kid starts making trouble, we get seriously bad vibes, as if the sterile soil and María Eugenia’s feverish dreams are a sign of Biblical judgement.

Cinematographer Tony Valera’s work is suitably creepy and evocative. It is a well-constructed period drama, María Fernada Martinez’s script holds few surprises. Still, for Nineteenth Century supernatural morality play shot on a shoestring budget, it looks surprisingly credible. Curious genre fans will find Alifa’s work and the general eeriness are worth checking out when Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell screens this Friday (9/25) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

VEFFNY ’15: Km 72

The rumored Verastegui briefcase probably doesn’t contain Marsellus Wallace’s soul, because the assorted cops and robbers looking for it have no use for such spiritual things. The old dodgy millionaire certainly entrusted it to the right man: his loyal bodyguard Dimas Luzardo. Unfortunately, nobody in the Verastegui household gets out alive, as we soon know from the flashback structure of Samuel Henríquez’s Km 72 (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Luzardo was once a cop and military before that, but driving a cab really sharpened his survival skills. His efficiency handling one aborted hold-up duly impressed his fare, Diego Verastegui, who hired him on the spot to be his bodyguard. Frankly, Luzardo did everything for Verastegui, but he was well compensated and grew close to his employer. Verastegui became a surrogate father to Luzardo, taking the place of the man who was gunned down on the highway years ago. Likewise, Luzardo is more of a son to Verastegui than his own offspring, the wastrel hipster Carlos.

Therefore, Luzardo is rather disappointed when he arrives late one evening to find Verastegui dead, with his son and two strangers muddling through a Mexican standoff of sorts. Luzardo will commence a series of harsh Rashomon-style interrogations that will end badly for all.

There are a whole lot of familiar noir elements in Km 72, but Henríquez executes them with style. There is also a bit of freshness to Luzardo’s relationship with Verastegui, which Frank Spano and Gustavo Rodríguez develop quite nicely. Spano also has the appropriate steeliness for Luzardo’s getting-down-to-business scenes. He certainly looks like one bad cat. George Akram’s Carlos Verastegui is also so obnoxious, nobody will possible object when Luzardo goes medieval on him. However, we never get an adequate sense whether the girl he picked up or the supposed magician who tagged along receive what they deserve. Still, her name, Anna Karina, is a nice hat-tip to Godard’s muse.

If you don’t mind noirs that are fatalistic and nihilistic, than Km 72 is rather a lot of fun. Frankly, Henríquez overcomplicates matters with the cops’ under-cooked conflicts in the framing device, but he pulls off some sly revelations in the third act. The Verastegui villa is also an effective location for what is essentially a five-character, one-set thriller. Gritty yet sentimental in a strange way, Km 72 is well worth seeing for noir fans when it screens this Thursday (9/24) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.