almas de la costa (w&d juan antonio borges, w. antonio de la fuente)

Almas de la Costa is apparently the first Uruguayan long form feature, even if the restored version only runs at around 45 minutes. The Sala Verdi is the perfect setting to watch the screening, accompanied by a pianist. Like the theatre itself, the film emerges from a moment when this relatively new country was finding its cultural feet, (some might say an ongoing process), as indeed was the medium of cinema. The acting has that theatrical feel that one finds in the silent films of Lillian Gish, the codes of which are well nigh impossible for a contemporary audience to grasp. Less than five years later Dreyer’s Joan of Arc would land like a dam-busting bomb, releasing a new wave of naturalistic emotion which is still being ridden, a century later. As such, one has to read between the lines to try and understand what the director and the film sought to communicate. The story revolves around the illness of Nela, who is afflicted with a malignant cough. Whilst this all seems very mundane today, at the time it would have been a clear reference to TB, and the audience would have grasped the fatal threat that Nela was confronting. Somehow or another, a supposed shipwrecked sailor is washed up on the shore of Nela’s fishing village (he is actually the heir to his wealthy mother’s fortune). Social mobility was no easier back in the day, but this stroke of fortune will change Nela’s life, as the two fall in love, enabling her to move away from the clearly documented poverty of the village. There is also a violent drunk character, whose macho impulses resonate with contemporary society, even if the film redeems him by having him undergo a benevolent transformation.

There’s nothing very radical about Almas de la Costa, (Souls from the Coast), nevertheless it is fascinating to map those ways in which a society doesn’t appear to change all that much over the course of a century, with so many recognisable traits embedded in the restored reels. Perhaps that lack of radicality also speaks of Uruguayan culture, the land that Lautréamont left behind, one that looks warily at the mavericks and the codebreakers.