clorindo testa. (w&d mariano llinás)

WTF is Clorindo Testa? If you don’t know beforehand, you’re not likely to emerge from Llinás’ film much the wiser. In a similar vein to Citarella’s Las Poetas Visitan a Juana Bignozzi, also from the Pampero stable, the director uses the commission of a film about the Argentine architect as a vehicle to interrogate the very idea of the documentary biopic, stripping out most of the bio in the process. The result is playful, frustrating, laugh-out-loud funny, and inevitably polarising. People come to the film to find out about Clorindo Testa, and leave either dazzled or ennervated by Llinás and his Rioplatense playfulness. It may be an acquired taste (but then so is cinema these days, and documentaries even more so), but there’s something enchanting about Llinás’ determination to go against the grain. When he shows the work-in-progress to friends and ex-wife, the ubiquitous Laura Paredes, they criticise him for making a film about himself, whilst he lurks at the back of the shot, raising his eyebrows. It’s all very arch, very offbeat, but it’s also great to see someone being given plata and taking the attitude that he’s going to do what he wants with it, even when everyone is telling him he’s in the wrong. In a medium that is so much formed by the compromise of artistic vision and the importance of treading a populist line, Llinás and Pampero remain a shining light on behalf of maverick self-indulgent genius. 

los colonos (w&d felipe gálvez, w. antonia girardi, mariano llinas)

The story of Red Pig, the Scottish mercenary and Indian killer Alex MacLennan, is one we came across when we visited Punta Arenas. The savage war that was waged against the Selk’nam in Tierra del Fuego, on both sides of the border, is the central pillar of Gálvez’ curious film, which follows in the footsteps trodden by Théo Court’s poetic Blanco en Blanco, also featuring Alfredo Castro. Los Colonos is split into two parts, the first describing one of Maclennan’s savage trips, the second reflecting on this seven years later. Camilo Arancibia’s wistful mestizo, Segundo Molino is the connecting link between the two parts, when a Santiago politician arrives to question him about Maclennan’s terrible crimes, provoking in Camilo and his wife the question of what it means to be Chilean as the nation celebrates its centenary. There’s a sense at times that the film doesn’t quite know what it wants to be: a mixture of Western, social commentary, historical testament. There’s even an apocalyptic sequence featuring a Scottish soldier who appears to have gone full Kurtz, (played by old acquaintance Sam Spruell). Perhaps it’s the presence of Mariano Llinas in the screenwriting team that leads to the inclusion of so many fascinating detours and side avenues: the sequence at the end of the world felt like it could quite happily have made for a whole film on its own. Maclennan, the central figure, drops out of the narrative before the final act; the conflict between him, the Texan and Segundo is arbitrarily curtailed. This final act feels relatively disconnected from the aesthetic and tone of all that has gone before, at once more assured now that the dialogue is not in English, but more stately, consisting essentially of two long set piece scenes. It might also be relevant to the film’s unevenness that its financing has come from so many different territories, many of them a long way away from the land of the Selk’nam. In spite of this unevenness, Los Colonos is always watchable, even if it feels as though, in the shadow of the overwhelming scenery, it sometimes pulls its punches. 

argentina, 1985 (w&d santiago mitre, w. mariano llinás)

Argentina, 1985 is a renewed testament to the power of cinema. In Argentina and Uruguay, the movie is drawing full houses and provoking an excitement that few films achieve. All this for a serious drama with little in the way of action. It contains a barnstorming performance from Ricardo Darin, Argentina’s most celebrated actor, but this isn’t the type of film that normally challenges box office records. Seen from a non Southern Cone viewpoint, it might be categorised as a political courtroom drama. The reason for its success, on more than just a commercial level, is that it tells the story of how the military leaders of the dictatorship were brought to justice, mainly, the film contends, as a result of the courage and hard work of the lone fiscal, Julio Strassera, played by Darin.

The director and his screenwriter pull out all the emotional stops. There have been many post-dictatorship dramas, from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil. Argentina, 1985’s effectiveness has to do with the way it tempers the inevitable emotional impact of the film with a dedicated resistance to any attempt to ramp up the dramatic stakes with artificial thriller tropes. One car explodes, but only one, and it’s a a side note. Strassera is given police protection, but instead of using this to heighten tension, the writers use it for comic effect, punning on the plain clothes policeman’s mighty name. The action remains downbeat and character driven, and in so doing retains a real sense of Buenos Aires and its laconic citizens, the real heroes of this story.

Having said all of which, Argentina, 1985 is self-consciously formulaic. The opening sequence is reminiscent of Taxi Driver, and the film is steeped in feelgood Hollywood cliches: the sassy kid who helps his dad out, the supportive wife, the odd couple pairing between Strassera and his younger naive assistant. There’s something almost anachronistic about all this. It’s clear that the filmmakers are seeking a classical register to tell a story of import. Some of the film’s brightest moments come when Llinás’ discursive storytelling techniques come to the fore, as characters relate dramatically significant moments that they have witnessed rather than letting the audience actually see them. At these moments the film acquires a more playful air, as the more idiosyncratic influence of Llinás competes with the dramatic verve of Mitre.

It would be fascinating to see this film in another part of the world where the emotional pull on the audience would not be quite so explicit as it is here. Would the dynamics of the courtroom scenes have quite such an effect? Would the immediacy of history shine through so compellingly? Would the bold inclusion of Strassera’s closing speech, of such enormous local import, translate? I don’t know the answers to that, but I do know that over here, the film has been a resounding success and deservedly so. 

balnearios (d mariano llinás)

Llinas’ first film is a blink-and-you-miss-it 80 mins long. Watching this, if he reminded me of anyone as a filmmaker it’s perhaps, no matter how tangential this might feel, Adam Curtis. An idiosyncratic vision which gives free rein to an intellectual playfulness. (Curtis might not like this word but all the same it seems appropriate). Llinas headed off towards the waters of fiction, whereas Curtis is all heavy-hitting politics, but watching their films feels like a similar experience. We are in the hands of a conjurer who will come up with unlikely associations and unpredictable combinations. They also both leave the viewer with the feeling that they are basking within the timeless waters of cinema. Even this reduced length film felt like it had an elastic timeframe. You never quite knew where you were headed or when the film might come to a natural conclusion. 

Balnearios, a word which is probably best translated as ‘resorts’ opens with some lovely archive footage of the Argentine and Uruguayan coast. The film is constructed out of various parts. There’s a section on the balnearios’ annual cycle, the transformation from the dead times of winter to the frenzy of summer. The film ends with an extended, warm-hearted section about an eccentric sculptor. At times the film feels like a slightly cobbled-together piece, a bricolage if you like, hints of a student movie, albeit one touched with brilliance. Towards the end of the first half of the film, however, there’s a section which is pure Llinas, anticipating Historias Extraordinarias. The story of a once-glorious, now decayed hotel is related via photos and recreated footage, detailing  how the hotel has passed through various hands in dodgy business dealings, at one point being owned by a fraudulent playboy with a French chanteuse wife. One of her songs plays balefully over images of the crumbling hotel. The sequence has a lazy Borgesian charm; an epic narrative recounted in ten minutes with a few broad brushstrokes, no more than a subset of the movie itself. A clear pointer for the direction in which this idiosyncratic filmmaker was headed.

la flor, parte 1 (w&d mariano llinás)

Paradox: should one write a review of La Flor, having only seen one third of the whole film? Under normal circumstances, the answer would be no. But La Flor is 808 minutes long. The first part alone is nearly three hours long. The film is made up of six stories, featuring the same four actresses, stories which are not connected. In the only part of the film which might be described as brief, the prologue, the filmmaker gives a rundown of each story, supplying an elegant diagram describing the shape of the film, a diagram which has the forma of a flower (or ‘flor’ in Spanish). The film, we are told, consists of four unfinished stories, another story which has a beginning, a middle and and an end, and a final story. Last night, in the company of Snr O, I watched the first two parts. 

Llinás specialises in shaggy dog stories. Another three part epic, Historias Extraordinarias, used voiceover to construct three narratives over several hours which never really went anywhere. Something similar occurs here, even though there’s no private-eye style narration. The first tale is a self-consciously B-Movie Mummy story, of possession in the Andes. It’s rudimentary and effective. The second chapter is more complex. This tells the story of a singing duo, who were a couple, albeit a couple whose story has been fictionalised in order to create a false marketing myth. The conflict between the two singers leads to a highly charged, brilliant rendition of their hit song, a duet in which the couple use the song like a weapon with which to wage their ongoing conflict. There’s shades of a sixties french romantic drama at work, something quasi-Godardian, very nouvelle vague, with faces in profile dominating the screen and much use of depth of field. 

Interweaved in this second story is another B-Movie strand, as one of the singer’s assistants is involved with a shadowy gang which is seeking to extract a serum for eternal youth from the venom of a “centurion scorpion”. The two narratives sit awkwardly within the same tale. The B-movie strand undercuts the potency of the music narrative. The chapter drags on, loses focus, becomes self-indulgent. Llinás’ temporal ambition, converting cinema into a kind of epic, oneiric poetry is revelatory. It sings of a lost art, part Abel Gance, part Homer.  However, it feels as though the filmmaker is wary of permitting any kind of emotional engagement; he wants this to be a definitively ludic, Borgesian viewing experience, nothing more and nothing less.

Which left me, as a viewer, frustrated; wanting to see the other episodes to see if the film could rise above its addiction to intellectual tomfoolery. It seems more than likely that La Flor will acquire a cult status. Like Tarantino, Llinás is an auteur of self-indulgent brilliance. Whether the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts is something that can only be assessed after watching the film in its entirety. Perhaps it’s unfair to write this review without having seen the film as a whole; but then again it’s entirely within the spirit of La Flor’s ludic narrative philosophy to react in a manner which is not entirely coherent.

la cordillera (w&d santiago mitre, w. mariano llinás)

Reaction to Santiago Mitre’s bravura La Cordillera in the faux-Swiss restaurant on San José was mixed. C remained neutral. Javier was underwhelmed, saying he never really engaged. I was quietly blown away. It might be that our respective nationalities had something to do with these reactions.

Mitre’s film is a collage of references. Part of the fun is working your way through them. To begin with, there’s a great deal of Aaron Sorkin. The film sets out its stall as a talkie, political drama. The president of Argentina, played by the likeable Ricardo Darin, is due to attend a regional summit. The day he leaves, with his team in tow, news breaks of a threat from his son-in-law to blackmail him with accusations of corruption. So far, so predictable. Darin appears to be squeaky clean, but he’s also an unknown quantity. (A neat irony, as Darin is one of the best known stars on the continent.) 

The team cross the Andes (the Cordillera of the film’s title) in a private jet, experiencing a teeth clenching level of turbulence at one point. They arrive at a plush, mountainous hotel, near to Santiago, where the summit is taking place. The hotel is reminiscent of Force Majeure - an isolated place where morality is put to the test. Darin settles in and we are introduced to the presidents of Chile, Mexico and Brazil, as the Argentine president gets inveighed into the political shenanigans of his neighbours. It’s worth noting at this point that this is a film which has been financed by Warner Brothers. It’s a big budget enterprise, featuring various superstars of the Latino/ Hispanic world, both in front of and behind the cameras. This is Latin America flexing its cinematic muscle, albeit with (presumably) financial support from Uncle Sam, something the film’s narrative ironically alludes to with the arrival of Christian Slater as a dubious representative of the US government. 

There’s something gloriously unwieldy about all of this: the narrative; the international co-pro; the far-fetched premise. The pacing is languorous and dialogue-heavy, as though the director is resisting commercial expectations. Then, with the arrival of Darin’s disturbed daughter, Marina, the film takes a twist. Whilst the President is quoting Marx to a Spanish journalist, his daughter has a decidedly funny turn and ends up mute in bed. This Hitchcockian swerve towards psycho-drama is consummated with the arrival of a psychoanalyst, a shift in the visual language, and the gradual revelation that everything we have assumed to be self-evident is nothing of the kind. 

La Cordillera is bold to the point of foolhardiness. In Latin America, there’s a tendency to view the Argentines, or at least the Porteños, as somewhat arrogant, or ‘soberbio’. La Cordillera is a decidedly ‘soberbio’ film. It’s arrogant, ambitious, over-reaching. It doesn’t really stack up. The mish-mash of styles and references pushes the boundary of the credible, risks excluding the viewer rather than engaging them. And yet, there’s also something wonderful about this boldness, or arrogance. There’s a refusal to be pigeon-holed within the assumed parameters of Latino (or third world) filmmaking. There’s a refusal to be pigeon-holed, full stop. Perhaps it was easier for me, as a non-native Latino, to suspend disbelief and go with the film’s jagged flow. But go with it I did. In contrast to the slick Relatos Salvajes, this is dangerous filmmaking which teeters on the edge of auto-destruction, but shows enough verve and brilliance to ride the turbulence, soar over the threatening peaks, and leave you wanting more.