CANNES 2012: POST TENEBRAS LUX and COSMOPOLIS—By Ryan Lattanzio

Like a Freudian dream where logic is nil and cryptic symbols await us on every sinuous narrative turn, Post Tenebras Lux [IMDb] is Carlos Reygadas' most personal film to date. Themes of banal family life, boyhood, soured innocence, sin and self-sacrifice color this visually sublime cinematic experiment, all shot in the Academy ratio (a la Andrea Arnold). I mean "sublime" in the Romantic-era sense of the expression, as the film—with its dreary, waterlogged landscape sequences, its fuzzy POV shots and high levels of aesthetic artifice—captures nature's ability to exhilarate us, and to terrify us.

The film resembles a kind of arthouse home movie, illuminating private family moments, from waking up in the morning to having dinner together at the table, through an autobiographical lens. Reygadas is known for his slow, dreamy films Silent Light (2007), Japón (2002) and Battle in Heaven (2005), and Post Tenebras Lux (Latin for "after darkness light") plays like a survey of all the Mexican director's works and fetishes.

It opens with a little girl discovering the world. Running through wet plains, she points to and names cows, horses, dogs and trees. This goes on for about five minutes until a thunderstorm bellows from above, and Reygadas moves us into a domestic interior. As his parents sleep, a little boy (presumably the girl's brother) is greeted by a cartoonish, anatomically correct, CGI-rendered devil, composed of a glowing red light. Carrying a briefcase, the devil enters, stands in the child's room and stares at him. The sheer surreality of this moment brings to mind Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)—populated by talking red-eyed monkeys, ghosts and doppelgangers—snagged the Palme d'Or when Tim Burton was head of the jury.

But Reygadas is totally his own man, despite references to Tolstoy, philosophy and even his own childhood. Sonorous sound design, amplifying the rustle of leaves and mud and trickles of rain, paired with breathless visual style, make for a purely cinematic, expressionist experience.

Post Tenebras Lux has been derided by nearly every critic imaginable for its impossibly difficult (non)structure, its lack of linearity and its disjointed narrative that moves discursively from episode to episode. Reygadas will become fascinated with one thing (a criminal subplot, for example, that seems to be one of the film's turning points) and then will simply move onto another, abandoning that plot entirely.

If there's some bleary sense of a narrative here, it's the story of Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro), a sex-starved patriarch who tries to do the very best for his family but ultimately lets his aggressions get the better of him. In one of the first scenes where we meet Juan, he beats one of his dogs to death, making it difficult to sympathize with this guy. His wife Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) is a beautiful, younger woman who lives with her husband and their two children (who we meet in the opening scenes) in an affluent home in some vacuum of space and time in the countryside of Mexico.

Like 2011 Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life, to which Reygadas is (however unconsciously) indebted, Post Tenebras Lux shifts back and forth in time, undulating and expanding to create new wholes while gobbling others. We see Juan and Natalia's children grown-up, looking pensive on a beach or running around a family party where pseudo-intellectuals discuss Russian authors. We see, unrelatedly, a team of English boys playing rugby (this is the film's most impenetrable scene).

In a moment as kinky and strange as anything this side of Buñuel, Juan and Natalia take a vacation to some indiscriminate European bathhouse. Traveling from room to room in this steamy hothouse, Juan and Natalia look for rooms called "Duchamp" and "Hegel" before Natalia has sex with a stranger while her husband watches. All the while, as Natalia's body is penetrated, a naked woman cossets Natalia, holding her head like a mother and sweetly telling her, "Your body was made for this." This disturbing and (unintentionally?) hilarious scene is one of the film's most bizarre, but we can see Reygadas's mastery of mise-en-scène at play. The bathhouse, tinged with pinkish hues, swampy and steamy and filled with grotesque naked bodies, displays his ability to carve imaginative interior spaces as well as exteriors.

I'm always a sucker for experimental, non-narrative cinema. There were a few moments where I dozed off and would wake up, completely lost, wondering, "Where the hell are we?" But I soon realized this was exactly what Reygadas aimed to achieve: a defamiliarizing cinema of a phenomenal world where anything can happen. Even if Post Tenebras Lux is a bit trapped inside its designer's head, the film has burrowed its way into mine.

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This year at Cannes has been a great one for auteurs. I've been graced with works by Reygadas, Haneke, Kiarostami, Vinterberg, Audiard, Anderson and, finally, David Cronenberg. Bristling with energy, cold unfeeling and ideas, Cosmopolis [official site] is the Canadian director's best film since A History of Violence (2005), which also premiered at Cannes.

Adapted from Don DeLillo's 2003 novel of the same name, Cosmopolis is a heady plunge into a dystopian urban milieu of greed, corruption, technology, celebrity and nihilism. Robert Pattinson—who I had never actually seen in a film until now (yeah, I know)—channels Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver, 1976) in his performance as Eric Packer, a dissolute 28-year-old billionaire who needs a haircut. The film tracks Packer's descent into mania as he rides in the back of a stretch limo trying to get across town in Manhattan the same day the president has arrived. Inside the soundproof limo, all is quiet. On the outside, the world roars with chaos and anarchy. Protesters tout the words of Karl Marx ("a specter is haunting the world") and everyone seems to be out to get Eric.

Eric holds an indiscriminate position of power as someone who deals in money, betting on the rise and fall of international currencies while living a life of debauchery and lawlessness. He drinks exorbitant amounts of liquor, has casual sex ad infinitum and discards people like spittle. Inside the limo, he is greeted by an idiosyncratic cast of characters played by Jay Baruchel (the skinny, stuttering dweeb from Freaks and Geeks and other Judd Apatow worlds), Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and even, in a gleefully mad little cameo, Mathieu Amalric. In one of Croneberg's career-best scenes, the film ends in a prescient encounter with Paul Giamatti, whose presence always looms in the world outside.

Like Cronenberg's last film A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis is insanely talky, written in brainy dialogue delivered with stilted unease. It is truly a language movie, structured like James Joyce's Ulysses in a series of episodic encounters built on lines that bruise and provoke. "Life is too contemporary," Binoche's character tells Eric. And that seems to be the main idea of this film. The world around Eric hurtles forth at lightspeed, where even the word "computer" is archaic and technology is at everyone's disposal, and is the cause of their ruination. Though Eric rigidly abides by ideals and obsessions—he gets a medical check-up everyday, he wants to feel something more than sex and empty human connections, and he doesn't even need that haircut—he is, at bottom, a nihilist. He rejects social conventions, makes his own rules and inhabits his own kind of enclosed utopia in that decked-out stretch limo.

Cronenberg shoots in tight close-ups with a wide-lens, so everything, like Eric's asymmetrical prostate, always appears a little off-kilter. A director known for his explorations of the body's (per)mutations, and its inevitable emergence with non-corporeal forms of capital, commerce and technology, Cronenberg is at the top of his game, here. Bouncing off one another like charged molecules, the ideas here are so plentiful that a second viewing seems paramount.

Cosmopolis will not succeed in the mainstream because it is too talky and too cerebral. But those who go the film looking to get their rocks off staring at Pattinson, the dark, chiseled prince of the Twilight films, won't be disappointed. The actor, in a brooding performance as Eric, is sexy-as-hell. Even the way he wields a revolver is erotic. And those eyes—my God, those eyes!—they could reduce you to a puddle of submission with one glance.

HOLA MEXICO FILM FESTIVAL 2010—The Evening Class Interview With Samuel Douek

Though the touring Hola Mexico Film Festival (HMFF) was woefully under-attended during its San Francisco stint at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema, it nonetheless provided a welcome program of both arthouse and popular films representing Mexico's cinematic output in the past year or so. The festival received some assistance from the Mexican Consulate, and near-to-negligible support from Landmark's publicist Steve Indig (an e-mail blast in the middle of the festival? A "you're on your own" attitude? C'mon, Steve!). Hopefully next year HMFF will hire a publicist and not rely exclusively on either the Mexican Consulate or Landmark to generate buzz on the event and, hopefully, they time the festival to not run the day after the San Francisco International wraps, by which time even the most resilient cinephiles are exhausted. I know I was. I would hate to think that—in a community that boasts such a large Latino demographic—support for HMFF will not increase in the years to come.

HMFF is continuing its national tour, currently screening in Miami at the Tower Theater through May 16, next in Chicago at Landmark's Century Centre Cinemas (May 20-25), then Washington, D.C. at Landmark's E Street Cinemas (May 27-June 1), wrapping up in New York at the Quad Cinema (June 2-June 6). Keep abreast of developments at HMFF's Facebook page.

As Festival Director Samuel Douek states in his introduction to HMFF's souvenir program: "Film has always been an important part of [Mexico's] culture and heritage, but we are now beginning to form a new chapter in Mexico's film history. More than 80 films have been produced this last year in Mexico, the government is giving filmmakers incentives, and numerous private production companies are emerging. Even more exciting, film festivals around the world are continuing to award Mexican films and the new wave of brilliant talent is beginning to emerge. Some would call this the modern day Golden Age of Mexican Cinema."

The proof's in the pudding. No less than a few days before HMFF launched at Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema, Alamar—Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature—won the New Directors Award at the 53rd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Alamar was just one of the excellent films hand-picked by Douek for his festival.

Australia's strategic concept of touring festivals that spotlight national cinemas and the communities imagined as their respective audiences have been interestingly discussed by Adrian Martin and Dina Iordanova in the recently-published Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities. At her site DinaView, Iordanova has offered up their exchange. How this strategy applies in the United States is just one of the many topics touched upon in my conversation with HMFF Director Samuel Douek.

Samuel Douek is a man who appreciates film, international travel and—above all—his heritage. Combining his three favorite things, Douek founded HMFF in 2006 with the goal of exposing the international community to the creativity, ingenuity and charm of Mexican culture through film. Douek was raised in Mexico City and at age 23 moved to Sydney, Australia where he received a Marketing degree from Mcquarie University in 2002 and a Masters degree in Event Management from UTS. Once in Sydney, Douek began to visit local festivals in the Sydney area and noticed the lack of Mexican influence in cinema. From that point on, he became inspired to create an international Mexican film festival and HMFF was eventually born. Douek's festival brings misunderstood Mexican culture to educate the entire world, one film at a time. His diverse but well-edited selection of 20+ films allows viewers to experience the unique walks of life that characterize Mexican identity and culture. Over the past four years, the festival has extended its reach to the United States, providing an opportunity for American citizens to experience the beauty, creativity and talent in Mexican film. Currently, Douek splits his time between Australia and Mexico, while also taking advantage of travel opportunities that send him across the globe. Inbetween afternoon screenings, we sat down to talk.

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Michael Guillén: Samuel, what motivated you to create a traveling film festival of Mexican cinema?

Samuel Douek: I didn't know I was doing a traveling film festival at the beginning. I was just following the trend in Australia, which was that all these different film festivals were organized to be ready to travel. They would screen in Sydney, then the next week they would be in Melbourne, then Brisbane, then Adelaide, then to Perth. Two or three of these festivals would run in those cities. For example, they would buy the rights for all these Italian films and screen them. Then the Goethe Institut did the same in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. And then there was a Spanish Film Festival and a French Film Festival and all of them used the same strategy. I decided I wanted to do a Mexican Film Festival using the same idea.

My first year (2006) I did it only in Sydney and Melbourne and we did really well so the year afterwards we added Brisbane and Perth. In our fourth year, last year, we went to six cities: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Perth.

During the second year of my festival, I came to the U.S. on holiday. I saw that there wasn't a Mexican Film Festival at all: not in New York, not in L.A., not anywhere! I thought about doing the same festival I was doing in cities in Australia, only here in cities in the U.S. Although it's not the same because in Australia the festival has the same sponsors everywhere. In the U.S. every city has its own sponsors.

Guillén: Who is sponsoring you in San Francisco?

Douek: La Kalle 105.7-100.7 FM, Estéreo Sol 98.9-99.1 FM, and Recuerdo 100.3 FM [all under the aegis of Univision 14], Telefutura, and Associated Trucking, Inc. Mexicana, Dos Equis, Cine Latino and Labodigital are our national sponsors.

Also, in Australia HMFF plays in the same chain of cinemas, whereas in the U.S. I work with Landmark, the independent Quad Cinema in New York, the independent Tower Theater in Miami, and the Arclight Cinema in L.A. So it's different in every city with marketing. The U.S. is much bigger and it's harder to do everything. The news spreads faster in Australia. If there's news in Sydney, it will go everywhere; if there's news in Melourne, as well—it's a 22-million people country—whereas in the U.S., if things are going on in L.A., people in San Francisco won't know. Same with New York. Every city is their own, so marketing is much more difficult than I thought it was going to be at the beginning when I was trying to replicate in the U.S.A. what I was doing in Australia.

Guillén: In Australia, what's your estimate of the Latino population? Are they coming to see your festival? Who comprises your audience?

Douek: It's 70% Australian, 30% Latino. Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less. Mexico is seen as unique and "exotic" in Australia.

Guillén: Ah, that explains why in your press release you bill HMFF as "Your Escape to Exotic Mexico"?

Douek: In Australia they really enjoy watching Mexican stuff because they don't have that much. HMFF has built a great audience there. It works very well for us.

Guillén: At last year's Toronto International Film Festival I had the opportunity to talk to Diana Sanchez who programs most of their Latino films. After acknowledging that Toronto does not have a sizeable enough Latino demographic to target, she indicated to me that she programs films more with a non-Latino audience in mind, aware that many of these are films that Latinos themselves wouldn't go see because they're more arthouse than genre and don't have enough charge. Do you find that to be true?

Douek: A hundred percent. There are amazing Mexican films that go out into the film festival circuit and win awards all around the world but—when they open in the cinemas in Mexico—Mexicans won't go out to see them. That's due to a lot of things. A film like Silent Light by Carlos Reygadas wins awards everywhere in the world, but then he could hardly sell it in Mexico.

Guillén: He told me he initially had difficulty selling the U.S. distribution rights for $10,000.

Douek: So it's not something that just happens in Mexico. A Romanian film that wins top honors at the Cannes Film Festival doesn't know if they'll go home and make a lot of money. Usually those films—though talented and amazing, breaking through with cinematic achievements—don't translate into financial success, and vice versa. Some films like El Estudiante (The Student, 2009) or Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out, 2008) that make millions of dollars in Mexican box office wouldn't go to any festivals around the world because they don't translate. Film festivals are more about the art part of cinema, whereas the box office is more about the commercial side. In saying that, HMFF is a portrait of Mexican cinema and we bring films like El Estudiante and Amor En Fin (Love On A Wknd, 2009), which are both commercial, but then we also bring films like Vaho (Becloud, 2009) or Norteado (Northless, 2009), which are more artistic. At the end, we're just trying to bring cinema that's well-produced with good sound, good acting.

Guillén: I understand that you scout for most of your films at the Guadalajara Film Festival?

Douek: That's where I've started to try and build the core of my festival for the last few years; but, this last year there weren't many good films there.

Guillén: Do you scout at the Morelia Film Festival?

Douek: I haven't been there because it's very close to the time that I'm in Australia launching the new HMFF. It's too problematic to go for a week to Morelia and then back to Australia. But this year I'm really looking forward to going to Morelia because now I think it's the festival to go to. The bulk of great Mexican films this year—Vaho, Norteado, Alamar and La Mitad Del Mundo (The Half of the World, 2009)—all came from the Morelia Film Festival. From Guadalajara this year, I only have Bala Mordida (Bitten Bullet, 2009) and Oveja Negra (Black Sheep, 2009).

Guillén: Since it narrows down to a matter of personal taste, what is it that you're looking for when you scout for films at these festivals? And how do you go about negotiating and securing these films for HMFF?

Douek: What I'm looking for is, as I said, films that are well-produced, that have something unique, that tell a story, that have something to say—not necessarily about Mexico—but a story. I want to see films that are edited well, that have good sound and lighting, and that have good acting: all in all, well done. Unfortunately, a lot of Mexican films are still being made under bad conditions. It's unbelievable that these badly-made films are being made simply because there's the production money to make them. I also look for variety in my program. I want a film like El Estudiante—which is a charming family-oriented film—and then a film like Alamar, a film festival favorite that has won awards all around the world.

To negotiate for the films, if I know the directors I will contact them. If not, I will contact the producers, the distribution company or IMCINE. By now, any film that's Mexican I have a way to get to.

Guillén: What do you offer your filmmakers? Why should they participate with HMFF?

Douek: We offer them the opportunity to screen their films in other countries. There are a lot of Mexican films that would never come to the U.S. if HMFF didn't bring them.

Guillén: I am personally grateful to HMFF for that.

Douek: Thank you. So that's one thing we offer. We also promote each film individually the best we can. At each city where HMFF plays, we invite the filmmakers to travel with us. [Laughs.] Imagine a huge touring bus with about 20 bunk beds so that the 12 filmmakers could travel with me for one month from city to city. Imagine me driving the bus with all the 35mm cannisters loaded underneath! That would be interesting to do ... once!

Guillén: Speaking of the spectacular dimension of HMFF, I'm aware that Alejandro Gerber Bicecci (Vaho) is the only director attending the San Francisco festival; but, there were several of your directors in attendance in Los Angeles?

Douek: We had a lot of talent, about 15 people. We had an opening night red carpet event for all the Hollywood media and received national coverage from Univision and Telemundo.

Guillén: Will there be talent at the remaining venues on the HMFF tour?

Douek: We always, at least, try to bring the director of the opening night film and one or two more, if possible. The important distinction is that HMFF is a festival but not a festival in the usual sense. In another way, we want to establish ourselves as a week of Mexican films in each city. For one week people can come and know that every time they go to the cinema they're going to see Mexican movies.

Guillén: I mentioned to you that one of the factors I feel is working against you this go-round is the fact that HMFF opened one day after the San Francisco International finished. What determined the timing of HMFF in San Francisco?

Douek: This year, in particular, there is the World Cup coming up on June 11 so we finish up in New York on June 6. Working back from that date, we set up the festival dates by working backwards every week. Unfortunately, San Francisco's dates were very close to the San Francisco International Film Festival. We didn't do that on purpose. Originally we were going to open in L.A., then go to Miami and then San Francisco and on to Washington D.C., but that became a bit of a logistic nightmare. Next year we would love to tour in June.

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Here is is the promotional video for HMFF USA 2010, made by Jason Archer. Archer has worked with Radiohead, Molotov and on such films as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life.



Cross-published on Twitch.

ARGENTINE CINEMA: LIVERPOOL—The Evening Class Interview With Lisandro Alonso

I was so impressed with Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool when it screened at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival that—not only did I write it up right away for Twitch and The Evening Class—but I actively pursued and scored an interview. Since writing up Liverpool nearly a year ago, I’ve read commentary here and there that has deepened my appreciation of the film. Most noteworthy is James Quandt’s ArtForum essay “Ride Lonesome” (available at Highbeam Research Library). “Ride Lonesome” is an especially impressive piece of criticism, tackling all of Alonso’s films, while specifically noting: “Liverpool seems designed for auteurial legibility.” Praising Alonso’s “dilatory style”, Quandt adds that Liverpool “keeps to [Alonso’s] antidramatic ways, attenuating narrative through empty time and withheld information.” Of related interest: Violeta Kovacsics and Adam Nayman’s interview for Cinema Scope; Darren Hughes interview for Senses of Cinema; and R. Emmett Sweeney’s interview for The Rumpus.

San Franciscan audiences will have a chance to experience the film themselves when Yerba Buena Center for the Arts mounts Liverpool’s Bay Area premiere on September 17, 19 and 20, 2009 as part of the film’s U.S. tour, organized by Adam Sekular of Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum who are likewise hosting “At The Edge Of The World: The Cinema of Lisandro Alonso” come November 11–19, 2009. Further, Alonso’s short film S/T will be featured in the fourth Wavelengths program for this year’s Toronto International. As Andréa Picard has written in her program notes: “Setting up an intense reciprocal gaze, Lisandro Alonso—whose work consistently explores the personal quests of men navigating natural settings—creates a face-to-face encounter with the wild in the beguiling and enigmatic S/T, a moment observed in a seemingly floating abyss.” This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary.

* * *

Michael Guillén: I loved your movie!

Lisandro Alonso: Thank you very much.

Guillén: And—I’ll be honest—I was drawn to Liverpool by way of Kent Jones’ Film Comment essay, wherein he waxed eloquent appreciating your aesthetic. He wrote: “Alonso is a fascinating figure who probably thinks more about form than any other narrative filmmaker his age. His attempts at overall unity are impressive if not fearsome, even when he miscalculates. At his finest, Alonso settles on journeys that accumulate observation (of landscapes and ways of life) that expand along the way into collectively internalized visions of existence and their horizon lines.” Do you think it’s true you think more about form than any other narrative filmmaker your age?

Alonso: What can I say? I don’t know. Maybe. There are a lot of filmmakers who are better at form than I am.

Guillén: Let’s back up a bit. How did you come to filmmaking?

Alonso: I studied in the Film Institute for three years but, before that, my favorite movie was Dirty Harry. [Chuckles.] After I studied a little bit, I discovered older filmmakers. I understood that, maybe, if I was lucky, I could make a film and express myself to other people through the film.

Guillén: Well, you’ve certainly caught critical attention. One of the critiques I’ve read most consistently is that your films achieve the non-dramatic by frustrating narrative expectation. For me, your films seem created by accretion, by the accumulation of many observed moments, that link together into a semblance of narrative.

Alonso: I think I understand what you’re trying to say. My films aren’t narratives. I observe people, different moments, and I put them all together in the film. The audience has to imagine or create something sitting in the chair.

Guillén: You give your audiences plenty of space to make associations. Spatiality, in fact, is a major aesthetic of your work. You use a lot of different kinds of space—not only inscapes, but landscapes—and specific locations like the lumber mill in southern Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, that create multiple environments, different spatial scenarios, for your characters to journey through or temporarily repose. And they always seem to be longing in their movement, or longing to be moving, and that longing is often registered as their looking within themselves as they journey, or looking out at the landscape they’re journeying through: overwhelming snow-capped mountains and bright indifferent skies. I especially noticed your aesthetic of spatiality when you placed Farrel (Juan Fernandez) in the restaurant at a table next to an autumnal mural of a white birch grove. Inside and outdoors, domestic and wild spaces, the autumn and winter seasons, were intriguingly counterpointed.

Alonso: I agree with what you say. I don’t know why, but using many spaces is interesting. I can’t explain why it seems interesting for me. I feel it and then I film it; but, I can’t tell you why. Maybe it’s intuition, probably. I didn’t think much about what I should be shooting or not, I just knew I wanted to shoot the film in nature. I really wanted to shoot a movie in the snow and on the cargo ship; but, whatever connection those two spaces have is just a coincidence.

Guillén: But surely you intend the contrast to be visceral? I mean, you feel the confined quarters of the ship cabin empty out into the relief of these immense landscapes. You feel it by way of contrast. In fact, one might say your earlier films looked out towards nature more while Liverpool explores confined domestic spaces: the ship cabin, Farrel’s mother’s home, the restaurant.

Alonso: For me it’s new to film in interiors. As you say, my previous films have a lot of nature, a lot of trees and land; but—during the process of making films—I discovered I wanted to film in interiors to see what would happen.

Guillén: Are you pleased with the result? Have you enjoyed yourself?

Alonso: Yeah! I like it. Making a film in nature is easier for me. If I shoot something in a realistic way in nature, then with sound and editing I can make it not as realistic. For example, if I film this phone for two seconds, it’s just a phone; but, if I film it for a minute and a half, it’s more than a phone. Of course, it’s still a phone; but, the audience is thinking, “Why is this a minute-and-a-half phone?” I don’t know if I’m saying this right.

Guillén: I get it. It’s like Hitchcock with his glass of milk that the audience knows has a drop of poison in it. But where I felt it in your movie was the scene where Farrel is passed out drunk on a bottle of Stolishnaya and wakes up near the empty bottle stuck in the snow. That empty bottle is fraught with implications. It’s also just beautiful somehow and I don’t know why.

Alonso: Has that ever happened to you?

Guillén: Passing out drunk? Of course! [Laughs.]

Alonso: Ah! That’s why you like that scene and think it’s beautiful.

Guillén: Well, if you’re talking about images I relate to, there’s another in Liverpool that comes more to mind. My father abandoned me when I was two years old. I never knew him really; but, one of my few memories of him is when he came to visit when I was about four years old. We spent time together on the front porch of my grandparent’s home—no longer, in fact, than Farrel spent with Analía (Giselle Irrazabal), maybe 20 minutes max—but it was such an intense memory because he had come out of nowhere, unexpected, having won a lot of money gambling in Nevada. My dad was a gambler and a drinker and he had come “home” drunk to boast his spoils. He said, “Hijo, hold out your hands.” And so I did, cupping both small hands. He filled them overbrimming with shiny new pennies. To this day, whenever I see a penny on the street, I pick it up, thank Mystery, and remember my Father. When Farrel gave Analía the keychain—seemingly the only way he could express any kinship, any affection, any legacy—it moved me to the marrow.

Alonso: That’s a wonderful story.

Guillén: With regard to that scene where the gift is exchanged, I have a question: why did she put it in her pocket to hide it from her grandmother?

Alonso: Maybe she just forgot about it? I don’t know. I wish I knew. She’s a little bit retarded and maybe—even though she has the keychain—she isn’t really aware of it? But I know what you’re saying, that little things like pennies or keychains can become meaningful treasures. Maybe. I’m not sure about that. It’s open. I’m asking. Maybe she’s just trying to understand it? What it is? Maybe she’s asking, “Why does it have ‘Liverpool’ on it? What does that word mean in this situation? It’s red. It’s a city. It’s a port. It’s a gift from my father. Is he my father? Who is he? What is this? I don’t know. It’s very cold out here. I’m going to go inside.”

Guillén: In other words, you prefer to keep these moments open-ended?

Alonso: Yes, for me. People think when you are a director that you know everything. I don’t. What I’m trying to say is that I prefer many questions to answers. I don’t have any answers.

Guillén: Since you admit you provide no answers to the questions Liverpool raises, and perhaps because its narrative doesn’t reach resolution, the film captures an emotional authenticity.

Alonso: What do you mean by “narrative”? How I’m telling the story?

Guillén: Usually when I refer to a narrative film, I think of a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end, like an O’Henry short story. A dramatic conflict that resolves itself. But filmmakers are free to tackle new kinds of narratives by subverting linearity, thwarting resolution, and telling the story in unexpected ways.

Alonso: But I tell a story. I think I tell a very sad story about this sailor who’s a father, and this girl who’s his daughter. I didn’t tell the story in a commonplace way, but I think there’s a story there. [I start to protest.] I know what you’re going to say. If you say to me, it’s narrative in terms of making people go into the cinema, that’s another question.

Guillén: A popular narrative; popular probably because it’s accessible.

Alonso: In the beginning, you cry a little bit. Now you laugh a little bit. Now the music swells. No, that’s not my show.

Guillén: So when you’re filming….

Alonso: I don’t know what’s happening.

Guillén: You don’t know what’s happening? [Chuckles.] You just see things you want to shoot and aim your camera?

Alonso: I talk with the people. I talk with the crew. I talk with the actors. I tell them, “We want to shoot this”—I don’t write much; 15 pages is enough for me—but I tell them, “This is what I’ve written.” They say, “What is it? It’s bullshit.” I say, “Maybe it’s a little bit bullshit but, okay, do it.” And we do it like that.

Guillén: But there are images that are so strong in the movie that it’s hard for me to accept they’re accidental or made up on the spot. Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I’m reading too much into your films?

Alonso: No, no, no. For me, too, the images are strong.

Guillén: For example, I loved the image of the Jesus on the back of the door.

Alonso: I added that because the art director was sleeping off an all-nighter at the bar. [Laughs.]

Guillén: And I love when Farrel is sitting at the battered red table against the green wall. The table’s length, the line it creates through the frame, abstracts the composition. There are many lines and angles in your compositions. Surely, you set up these compositions?

Alonso: I give that a little bit of thought, yes. [Grins.] I like to shoot night imagery and I have to look through the camera and make sure it’s in focus.

Guillén: And what I’m especially happy about is that you keep your camera still so your compositions can be appreciated. Your camera stays put and watches intensely. Your camera is composed as it’s composing. As in that final scene when Farrel is walking off towards the woods. The duration of that scene plunges the audience into a quizzical contemplation.

Alonso: Where do you think he’s going in that scene? Do you think he’s going back to the ship?

Guillén: Yeah. He knew he had to be back by a certain time and had to start making his way there.

Alonso: Walking?

Guillén: He’ll find a way back. He’ll flag down a logging truck and hitch a ride or something.

Alonso: You’re positive? I’m more negative.

Guillén: You don’t think he’ll make it back to the ship?

Alonso: You know why I think that? There’s a little detail that I couldn’t get quite right when I filmed it. When Analía asks her father for money, I noticed—and not everybody noticed—that Farrel takes a moment, looks into his wallet and then hands over all the money in the wallet. Without money, he won’t be able to buy passage. I filmed that scene badly. If I had filmed it better, everyone would have known he wasn’t going to be able to make it back to the ship on time.

For me, he went back home to see his mother and she was already senile so now—having done all he could do—he could rest his mind and drink without conscience, drink better. Also his daughter didn’t recognize him so—after giving her all his money—he feels free. Until he returns to the ship. Maybe I’m just talking about me in 40 years? But I see him at a point where he can leave family behind and just go. He can go with the memory of having done something good. He thinks: “Now I can walk through the snow until something happens.”

Guillén: As someone who has travelled a lot, perhaps I am more hopeful about his returning to the ship because I’ve been in situations where I’ve been stranded with only a dollar in my pocket for days. I’ve learned from experience that if you really want to get from here to there, you can.

Liverpool is a movie longing to move. First, Farrel petitions for shore leave so he can get his land legs back, and then—once he’s been traveling around on the land for a while—he wants to return to sea, or—as you’re insinuating—wherever he ends up wanting to be. There’s a restlessness that impels the film forward. It reminded me of Joni Mitchell’s lyric, “You want to keep moving and you want to stay still; but, lost in the moment some longing gets filled.”

This kind of links back to what I was saying before. He’s a character who gauges his own movement by what he sees around him. He has to see the land. He has to see his mother. He has to see his daughter. And one of my favorite scenes was when he woke up hungover and was trying to see.

Alonso: [Laughs.] He sleeps everywhere.

Guillén: He slept outside and nearly froze to death! One curious omission in all of this is his mother Trujillo (Nieves Cabrera).

Alonso: What about her?

Guillén: That’s what I was going to ask: what about her?

Alonso: I don’t know. [Laughs.]

Guillén: Okay, I get my questions are annoying, but these are the kinds of things I wonder about watching a film.

Alonso: The only thing I can say is that when I “discovered” this grandmother, I asked her, “Nieves, can you act? Do you know that we are trying to make a movie? And that we want you to be in the movie? We’re going to pay this amount of money; do you want to be in the movie?” Then I asked her kids, “Does your mother want to be in this movie?” “Yes,” they said, “She wants to be in the movie.” I asked, “Can she work?” “Yeah,” they said, “she can work.” So I went to her and I said, “Ola, quieres caminar? [Are you ready to go?]” and she said no.

After about a month, I returned to the location, which was now covered in snow. When some of the people from the crew saw Nieves, they couldn’t believe their eyes and they thought bad of me because I wanted her to walk in the snow. Everyone on the crew was looking at me like, “You motherfucker, what are you doing?” I was so nervous, I started to laugh, and then I jumped out the window into the snow. I didn’t return for about two hours.

Nieves was lying in her bed for two days. It’s funny but it’s not funny. She’d eat and go to the bathroom whenever she wanted. I would say, “Now we are shooting” and she would go, “What?” I realized you can’t do this with a professional actor because this little retarded girl and this old woman make an effect, but the fact that they’re real people and not actors has an affect on the crew also. When Farrel asks his mother, “Do you know who I am?”, the truth is Nieves didn’t really know anything about what we were doing there and so she reacted to Farrel’s questions quite naturally. What I’m trying is to say that—whatever the old woman was feeling—the whole crew was feeling, behind the camera as well.

Guillén: So you’re catching a real moment and placing it in your story?

Alonso: That scene was totally for real. I’m not the guy with a professional actor. It was the same with the girl Analía. She made the crew nervous when we were shooting but how else could I capture that? I can’t do it with a professional actor.

Guillén: Several directors whose work I favor refuse to work with professional actors for fear of losing a strived-for authenticity.

Alonso: When I was young, I took some acting lessons. But on the day I had to recite something, I was totally drunk. I decided that would be my last lesson and that—if I wanted to be drunk—I didn’t need to be in acting class; I needed a bar. What I’m trying to say is that I really respect actors; but, I don’t want an actor coming up to me and whispering, “Lisandro, what do you think of my performance? What’s my motivation?” I don’t care for that.

Guillén: Is your filmmaking an attempt to make the image complete in and of itself?

Alonso: There’s no Shakespeare in my movies. I just work from scene to scene, smoke cigarettes, say this, say that.

Guillén: Let me ask you this then: before you make your movie, I understand you explore where you think you might want to film, and then you just hang out there for a while? You watch and listen to the people who live there and you decide once and for all if that’s where you want to make your movie. In this case, you noticed the old grandmother and you noticed the mentally challenged girl and you decided you wanted to put them in your movie because they would have—as you’ve indicated—a particular effect. Despite all your efforts to make the filmmaking as naturalistic as possible, does the making of the movie influence the place and the people? Do they change because you have arrived with a camera to film them? Have they even seen the finished film?

Alonso: No, not this film. My other films, yes. I made a film called Fantasma, which is about the lead actor in Los Muertos going back to Buenos Aires to see the release of his own film. For me Fantasma is very special. But to answer your question, no, I don’t think the making of the movie influences the place or the people. We create an environment of happy moments between the people who live there and the people who have come to film them. We dance together. We eat. We drink. We enjoy the day together and that’s all I want to do.

Guillén: You’re reminding me of Carlos Reygadas and his film Japón where he cast an old woman named Magdalena Flores, for much the same reasons you cast Nieves Cabrera in Liverpool. Magdalena was perfectly wonderful in Japón. No professional actor could have delivered her performance. And then—because Reygadas enjoyed meeting her and working with her so much—he used her in his next movie, much to his regret. He told me that it was one of the biggest errors in casting he ever made when he sought to use her twice because—when she made her appearance in the second movie—everybody knew her, everyone had an association of her with the previous film. Reygadas didn’t realize that was going to happen, but it happened and it impacted the authenticity of her scene. Did you have any problems like that when you were reusing the actor in Fantasma?

Alonso: No, I don’t think so. Actually, I’m not working with some of the first actors in my films and am trying to discover some new people; but, I enjoy working again with people that I know.

Guillén: How did you find Juan Fernandez?

Alonso: I was looking for the location and he was working as a caterpillar operator removing snow off rooftops. I saw him and waved to him and he ran away.

Guillén: I would run away too. “Oh no! It’s Lisandro Alonso!!”

Alonso: [Laughs.] But the good thing is that nobody knows me. So I would keep saying hello and he would keep looking at me like, “I don’t want anything to do with you people.” But after three or four hours of speaking with some of his co-workers, taking photos of the interiors, he finally was fucking freezing outside and came in to the restaurant. I asked him who he was and if I could take his picture? He finally said okay. After two or three coffees more, he had to go. The next day I called him and asked him if he would like to be in my movie? He said, “Okay, but I will have to ask permission from my family.”

Guillén: I hope this is not a stupid question or a disrespectful question, but are these people you meet in these remote locations even aware of movies?

Alonso: No. Absolutely not. Juan Fernandez, maybe.

Guillén: Because he was a natural, as they say and the camera loved him. He has a beautiful face and a noble nose. So what was it that you saw in him that you felt made him eligible to be the lead actor in your next movie?

Alonso: I don’t know. But once he agreed to be in the film, I told him he couldn’t back out or ask for more money or run away. He promised he wouldn’t. I told him he could drink whatever he wanted to drink but he had to wake up in the morning and come to work. He said, “Okay, I will do it.”

Guillén: That’s reminding me of a Malaysian filmmaker Deepak Kumaran Menon who brought his film The Gravel Road to the San Francisco International. Early in the film he had a little boy cast as a member of the family and I seemed to be the only one who noticed that halfway through the film the little boy disappeared without explanation and never showed up again, so I asked him during the Q&A what had happened to the boy. “I was hoping nobody would ask me that,” he answered. [Laughter.] Apparently, the boy decided he simply didn’t want to be in the movie anymore and the filmmaker didn’t have the means to reshoot his scenes. So it’s interesting how you lay down the law with your non-actors.

Alonso: From the moment we begin shooting the film, I know the people who I met from a month previously. I know all of them who live there and I know I can trust them.

Guillén: Do you know Pedro Costa?

Alonso: Yes.

Guillén: I’ve been much impressed with how he lives with the people he films in an effort to more accurately capture their situations, so much so that at this point he allows them to provide input into how the film shapes itself.

Alonso: He’s a good fellow, Pedro. I do understand why he changed his way of filmmaking and why he scaled down from 35mm to video. I understand why he wanted to film on his own and not with a crew of 100 people.

Guillén: Costa told me—and I was wondering if your experience is at all comparable—that he switched from the large moviemaking equipment and extensive crews to smaller cameras that he could handle himself or with one or two other people because coming into these people’s lives with all that equipment and commotion was, in essence, a death eye that killed what he was trying to record.

Alonso: I can understand that. Maybe he can’t raise the money to afford 35mm filmmaking so he has to change in order to survive as a filmmaker? I appreciate that. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m just a stupid kid, but my understanding is that for the movies he wanted to make, he couldn’t get the money so he had to use different equipment and shoot in a different way. I might be wrong but I think one of the main reasons he changed his style was because he couldn’t get the funding.

Guillén: He’s admitted to me that funding is an uphill battle. As for yourself within Argentina, as one of the key players in the so-called New Argentine Movement, do you consider yourself that way?

Alonso: The New Argentine Movement? I don’t know. New blood? Ten years ago there was new blood making films but now they’ve become old blood trying to make new films while new people keep making old films. What I do trust about this New Argentine Wave, or whatever you want to call it, is that they were basically people shooting on the weekends, sharing sandwiches, nobody was paid, and they were all just trying to make honest films. Nowadays, that spirit has disappeared because they now have families and production companies, they go to film festivals, they’ve met Viggo Mortensen…. [Laughs.]

Guillén: To wrap up, I simply want to say that I thoroughly enjoy the films you are making. I’ve come somewhat late to your work and am now looking forward to going back and appreciating your first three films, which people have been recommending to me for ages. I wish you the best of luck in the future in what you want to do and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Alonso: Thank you for your time, man.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SERGIO DE LA MORA ON RECENT MEXICAN CINEMA

Aiming an erudite spotlight on Mexican cinema is Sergio de la Mora, author of Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film, who recently contributed an assessment of the best of recent Mexican cinema for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His overview includes Julián Hernández's Broken Sky (El Cielo Dividido, 2006), Carlos Reygadas's Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el Cielo, 2005), Amat Escalante's Sangre (Blood, 2005), Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season (Temporada de Patos, 2004), Beto Gómez's Pink Punch (Puños Rosas, 2004), Luis Estrada's A Wonderful World (Un Mundo Maravilloso, 2005), Felipe Cazals's The Citrillo's Turns (Las Vueltas del Citrillo, 2005), and Juan Carlos Rulfo's In the Pit (En el Hoyo, 2005). Hopefully, the San Francisco Bay Guardian will draw upon Sergio frequently for cinematic updates from our neighbor to the south.

Sergio's previous articles available online include his fantastic interview with Ximena Cuevas for Senses of Cinema and his Current Trends pieces for the 2005 San Diego Latino Film Festival, one an overview and the second a study of María Candelaria.

Cross-published at Twitch.

The Agony of Ecstasy—Two Nights With Carlos Reygadas: Battle In Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005)

This entry is not for the spoiler-wary!

Most of the recent press on Reygadas has concerned Battle in Heaven. I offer my favorites: Jonathan Marlow's insightful Sundance interview with Reygadas for Dave Hudson's Greencine Daily. This interview was instrumental in my enjoying and learning from the Reygadas residency at Yerba Buena. Kudos, Jonathan!!

Michael Atkinson for the Village Voice: "Battle in Heaven, as ambitious as its title, is a living mystery, already notorious for hardcore-osity but so serious about its formal intelligence and so deep-dish in its evocations of inexpressible desolation, personal and social, that it occupies your skull like a siege of Huns."

Karin Badt, Cannes 2005, Bright Lights Film Journal: "The important thing is these two human beings. Just watch them and be patient. Cinema is a means of expression, not communication. I don't want to say anything. When you kiss someone, are you trying to communicate anything?"

Bryant Frazer, Deep Focus: "The film's explicitness is crucial to its meaning. By dwelling on both types of bodies—the trim and conventionally beautiful versus the flabby and utterly ordinary—Reygadas emphasizes both physical closeness and economic distance. He seems less interested in bodies in the erotic sense than in the way that they can be indicators of class—in the sense that body shapes are influenced by economics, because the folks without the money to dine well end up feasting on junk instead, which sticks to their figures."

Antonio Pasolini, europeanfilms.net: "Of course, there is love in this film as well as manipulation. There's also injustice regarding the bad distribution of tools. Injustices from the system, not just from nature itself."

Nick Roddick / FIPRESCI 2005: "[I]t's easier to connect the fact that you have breakfast in the morning and then you go to work afterwards than to connect that you dream one night about fire in the sky and that you go to work the next day."

Aquarello at Strictly Film School: "Reygadas' bracing portrait of Mexico's profoundly fractured and polarized--and perhaps irredeemable--society, human connection occurs not through the opacity of the soul but through the characters' disembodied rituals that serve as communion for unarticulated desire."

Here's a good video clip interview with Reygadas at Cannes:

* * *

Delighted with Japón, I was hyped for Battle In Heaven. All in all, Battle was not as satisfying for me as Japón, though it has certainly hovered around me like some unresolved thought. What truly bothered me about Battle was the idea that this young woman Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) could confess her shadow to Marcos (Marcos Hernández), her chauffeur since childhood, and even make him complicit through secrecy and sexual favors, but when he confesses his shadow to her, a line gets crossed. An equality is denied. Ana encourages Marcos to turn himself in knowing full well that he will be put away, possibly even executed. She wants to dispense with the distasteful. This betrayal adds weight to an already almost unbearable burden and, Marcos, terrified in the face of truth, pees his pants and murders her. If ever someone has been swept up by the horrors of circumstance into ignoble death it is Marcos in Battle in Heaven.

The sound design in this movie accomplishes what the narrative shifting did in Japón. In one particularly stunning sequence Marcos is at a gas station where loud music is being played. A procession of chanting penitents winds by and the sound shifts from the loud music to the chanting, builds, then recedes back to the loud music. A moment where you hear as well as see two realities.

In another notorious scene where Marcos and Ana are having sex, the camera moves out of the room and circles the courtyard before coming back in. When asked about which directors had influenced him, Reygadas did not mention Hitchcock so this is undoubtedly my complete projection; but, this scene reminded me of the one in Frenzy where just as the necktie murderer is about to rape and kill another victim, the camera pulls away from the scene of the crime, backs down the hallway and stairwell through the front landing, down the front steps, and across the street. In Frenzy, however, if the camera had returned, the crime would have been evident. Not so in Battle, where the camera does return, and the crime is obscured. Notwithstanding, the punishment remains severe.

02/20/06 UPDATE: What goes around, comes around. After convincing me that non-actors should embody their roles and not represent them, Carlos Reygadas reminded himself as well as those present that this is not as easily done as it sounds. In Battle In Heaven Magdalena Flores—Ascen in his first film Japón—makes a cameo appearance. Reygadas was excited at first about including Magdalena in his second film, but, realized afterwards that it was a mistake as the taint of recognized celebrity had already taken. I had to agree and told him that, as pleased as I was to see her again, it distracted from the film. Amazing how quickly this happens!!

02/26/06 UPDATE: At the L.A. Weekly Scott Foundas interprets the opening blowjob of Battle In Heaven to be a dream sequence. I didn't see it that way at all and wonder if Reygadas intended it as such? Unfortunately Reygadas's residency at Yerba Buena has come and gone and he's not around to ask. I always regret the unvoiced unanswered questions! Foundas ventures: "If Japón was Reygadas' objet d'art, then Battle is his objet de scandale, his elephant-dung Jesus . . . ."

01/27/07 UPDATE: A shout out to Rob Davis who recently interviewed (or should I say recently posted his interview with) Carlos Reygadas for Errata. Not only does this fascinating interview delve into the director's filmmaking subjectivity of sound and image, his use of non-actors, and some of his favorite filmmakers, but provides an up-to-date compendium of recent online commentary on Reygadas sophomore feature Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el Cielo, 2005).