Lion’s Den

Recipient of five Lima Latin American Film Festival Awards, Lion’s Den is the characteristically exceptional fifth feature from Argentinean director and producer Pablo Trapero. Torn from countless contemporary headlines, this riveting and resolutely realistic tale addresses issues of maternity, jail and justice through the plight of mothers forced to rear their young in Argentinean prisons.

Julia (Martina Gusman), a 25-year-old woman, two weeks pregnant with no criminal record, awakens in her Buenos Aires apartment surrounded by the bloodied bodies of two men with whom it is suggested she had been intimately related. One is dead; the other clings precipitously to life.

Remanded in custody for what is presumed to be a crime of passion, Julia is finally convicted and finds herself and her baby son locked behind the bars of a foreboding prison facility equipped for mothers, their young children and other pregnant inmates. Initially distant and aloof, Julia eventually bonds with a fellow inmate who has herself reared two children in jail. She also re-establishes a tentative link with her mother, Sofia (Elli Medeiros), who seems keen to repair the mistakes of her past. However, as her young son, Tomas, grows, the dawning realisation that he will be taken from her when he reaches the age of four begins to exert a terrible pressure and foreboding.

With the majority of the film shot inside maximum security prisons, with real inmates as extras, Lion’s Den signals an unprecedented first in Argentinean filmmaking. Many of the guards, matrons and keepers were also played by real staff of the Bonaerense Penal System. To complete the thirst for authenticity, the set was brought behind bars and the whole cast and crew co-existed with the penitentiary system for the duration of the production.

The result is a documentary verisimilitude that is unsparing in its rendering of the claustrophobia and indignity of prison life. The tone is never gratuitous or exploitative, however. Trapero instead brings a measured approach to the various challenges and battles Julia must face in order to stay alive and safeguard the wellbeing of her young son. There are also various gestures towards a sense of redemption, with the flickering moments of kindness and solidarity carrying a potent charge.

Though an arduous production that endured numerous hold ups and delays while the wheels of bureaucracy were greased, the film, for all its numerous virtues, is undoubtedly founded on the tremendous central performance of Martina Gusman. Hollow, harried, haunted and ultimately hardened, Julia – remarkably – is Gusman’s first leading role.

Inspired by the reality of prison units like the one depicted, and the fact that society turns its back on the children that are equally punished by the sins of their mothers, the film, Trapero asserts, is intended to build not only a cinematographic tale but to encourage room for debate and reflection. In this, and in all other regards, Lion’s Den is an unqualified success.

Jason Wood

Anticipation:

One of the pioneering forces in the new wave of Argentinean cinema, the films of Pablo Trapero are always eagerly awaited.

Enjoyment:

Enjoyment is an inadequate description for this sobering and rigorously intelligent look at motherhood and incarceration.

In Retrospect:

Martina Gusman’s central performance alone would be worthy of memory, but there’s so much more to cherish about this film.