Discovering Latin America Film Festival 2008: The Winners

For a slightly different take, fellow judge Jason Wood has given us permission to run his original comments here. Check them out:

Discovering Latin America Critic’s Prize

I know it’s a matter of course to do this (although some of the other jury panels I have been on suggest otherwise) but I did want to start by commenting on the strength and diversity of the films under consideration for the Critic’s Prize. I also feel that the films showing across the festival are of a very high standard.

Before narrowing the films down to my top two choices my ‘Special mention’ choice nomination and because I am regrettably unable to participate in what will no doubt be a lively discussion with my co-jurors due to being at a festival elsewhere, I am going to add a few very general thoughts on each film. These are below and are in no particular order.

Perro come perro / Dog eat Dog
I know it’s all too easy to describe this as the Colombian Amores perros but it really did feel like the Colombian Amores perros. Vividly realized and with some well executed moments and attention to detail (a half drunk glass of water littered with tiny bugs) it nonetheless felt over familiar and derivative. The director’s background is in music videos and in general this was all too apparent. Gripping enough (though the final 15 minutes are over-wrought), it also had a particularly menacing psychopath. This is also a film, for better or worse, that I could see having a commercial life outside of festivals.

La Buena Vida / The Good Life
I was an admirer of Whiskey and I thought that this was exceptional. I was reminded of Kieslowski in Wood’s look at briefly interconnecting lives and his perceptive analysis of contemporary loneliness and alienation. A fascinating portrait of Santiago and of modern city life in general, La Buena Vida is also beautifully performed by its ensemble cast.

Leonera / Lion’s Den
Boasting an astonishing authenticity – it was shot on location in a Buenos Aires prison with any of its staff and inmates as extras – I found Leonera a gripping story of determination. Forensic in its attention to detail and unsparing in its revealing of the horrors of prison life, the film’s anchor is the tremendous central performance by Martina Gusman. Incredibly tense and profoundly moving, I consider this Trapero’s best work since El Bonaerense

Cordero de Dios / Lamb of God
An intelligent and well-crafted look at the military dictatorship of 1978 and the 2002 economic crisis in Argentina, I found Lucía Cedrón’s feature debut to be solid yet curiously uninvolving. Knowledge that the director’s father died in exile under mysterious circumstances during the dictatorship perhaps partly explains the carefully calibrated emotions on display here and Mercedes Morán is characteristically excellent.

Desierto Adentro / The Desert Within
I was fortunate enough to see this with a partisan Guadalajara crowd and it was quite an experience, contributing immensely to my admiration of Plà’s follow-up to La Zona. Quite apart from the fascinating subject matter, perhaps the bloodiest period in Mexico’s history, the scope and richness of the director’s approach to the material is impressive. Beautifully shot by noted DOP Serguei Saldívar Tanaka, the expressive use of animation is reminiscent of La Rabia and helps articulate the sense of external and inner struggle.

O Grao / The Grain
Reminiscent of Ten Canoes in its focus on indigenous tales, Petrus Cariry’s O Grao is for me the most astonishing discovery of the festival. Naturalistic in tone, it is wonderfully evocative and provides a glimpse into rural Brazilian life. Understated and deceptively simple, perhaps the film’s major asset is its striking and tremendously sensual cinematography. The film provided a glimpse into a hitherto unknown environment and I felt enriched for having watched it.

Estõmago – A Gastronomic Story
Screened in Toronto and Berlin and a popular prizewinner at Rotterdam and Rio de Janeiro, Estõmago offers a heady brew of sex, money, power and food. A sly and subtle work that put me in mind of both The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Ripstein’s Deep Crimson (the film is generally evocative of the Mexican master in its use of magic-realism), Marcos Jorge’s misanthropic drama is another film amidst the selection that could potentially enjoy limited break-out success. The prison sequences are especially effective, with the film’s central protagonist (effectively portrayed by João Miguel) plotting his rise from bottom bunk to top.

Meu nome não é Johnny / My Name ain’t Johnny
My enjoyment of this film was hampered somewhat by the fact that my screening copy came without subtitles. I also kept thinking how much leading actor Selton Mello – who is fantastic – looks like Jack White of The White Stripes. Subtitles or no, what I could ascertain is that Meu nome não é Johnny is an incredibly well made picture with impressive period details. A Brazilian equivalent of Ted Demme’s Blow, and similarly based on real-life events and the life of João Guilherme Estrella, this struck me as being particularly attuned to the subject of redemption.

La Mujer sin cabeza / The Headless Woman
I was fortunate enough to see this in Cannes and though it really divided people I was utterly entranced by it. Perhaps not as immediate as either La Niña Santa or La Ciénaga it is certainly no less remarkable and confirms Lucrecia Martel as one of the major voices in contemporary world cinema. The film’s opaque nature is actually its strength and it percolates in the memory long after the final images have left the screen. Fragments of the film continue to haunt me – and I saw it way back in May – and I honestly think hat this is a work that will only increase in stature.

And so….the two choices I would like to put forward for the critics prize are:
La Mujer sin cabeza by Lucrecia Martel
and
La Buena Vida by Andrés Wood.

I find it really hard to pick between the two but the Martel probably just shades it.

My ‘Special Mention’ film is O Grao by Petrus Cariry’s Petrus Cariry.

Jason Wood.

Written by Matt B on December 12th, 2008 at 17:03