belmonte (w&d federico veiroj)

That Belmonte’s curiously Francophone name sounds like something out of an Alexandre Dumas novel is alluded to only twice in the film. At one point, in what we come to realise is a vision, he grasps a musketeer’s sword, which never appears again. And at another he wields his paintbrush like a sword as he attacks the canvas, in a moment which is slyly abridged. These moments are part of the protagonist’s gradual transition into a kind of stylised madness, one which ruptures the film’s naturalism with a subterfuge which is almost, but not quite, bewildering. 

Belmonte is an expressionist painter, whose work is reminiscent of Kirchner and Gil. His paintings suggest a mind which exists on the edge of distortion. At one point his daughter asks why he always paints men naked. There’s a clear implication that Belmonte, who seems comfortably troubled, would like to get to grips with his inner self, although his life is too normal (Montevidean?) to allow him to do so. Recently separated from the mother of his child, and coming to terms with a friend’s suicide, he becomes increasingly erratic, until finally he becomes afflicted by low-key visions that betray the extent to which he has become unhinged. 

The film questions the scope of the artist to be different, or mad, within the context of conventional society. Belmonte is a dad who has to pick his child up from school, and one who wants to have a good relationship with his nearest and dearest. At the same time, he reserves the right to cling to the deviance which fuels his art. It’s a delicate tension, which the film negotiates with some wit. There are no fireworks, everything is understated, even madness, but there’s the feel of a steady hand at the tiller, aided by some exceptional camerawork, steering the tale into ever more choppy waters. The film depicts a convincing Montevideo, a city which appears at the edges of the frame, the camera never revealing more than it needs to. Belmonte might drive a hipster car, but we never see it in its entirety, just as we never get to see more than glimpses of his pictures. Even the eponymous title hints at things we don’t know and never will, but this is always beguiling, rather than frustrating; the film succeeds in pulling off its delicate mission with some élan.