In Thursday till Sunday, director Dominga Sotomayor takes us for a drive through Chile’s deserted landscape, as passengers of a family going on a camping trip.

From the beginning, as the two parents are packing the car while the kids are sleeping, we can hear the mother ask her husband quietly if he really wants her to come. In the same – soft – manner, the movie will unveil the last days of their relationship, while the teenage daughter slowly realizes what’s going on.

What matters here is obviously not the destination but the inner turmoil of those 3 family members – the 4^th member, a boy, being too young to understand. The filmmaker makes us experience the situation through the eyes of the girl as passive witnesses. As we start to figure out that the mother might have been cheating with a co-worker, the film starts shifting from neutrality to somewhat side with the dad – a feeling that is confirmed when the mother abruptly abandons them in the middle of the night.

While most – American – filmmakers would have translated such a premise into an explosive drama, to his credit, Ms. Sotomayor keeps it low-key, focusing on those invisible emotional and psychological forces and It’s not difficult to see here her influences: With its use of the desert as backdrop, Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point) obviously comes to mind as well as Abbas Kiarostami’s latest works (Like Someone in Love, Certified Copy) for his use of a car as a main setting.

To make such movies work though, you need to convey something strong to keep the spectators’ interest, while they are confined in those bare environments; for example, Mr. Antonioni offered a colorful portrait of the 60s in Zabriskie Point while Mr. Kiarostami delivered a philosophical discussion inCertified Copy. The problem with Ms. Sotomayor’s movie is that it lacks this strength. Because everything is toned down, there is nothing to contrast with the desert landscapes and claustrophobic car setting. As a result,Thursday till Sunday remains flat, failing at transporting us beyond its self-imposed limited boundaries. After a while, the film turns into a draining experience, with not much to say and nowhere to bring us. This is a breakup story we have seen many times, in other settings, and the characters’ lack of reaction makes the whole thing quite uneventful. This is even more disappointing that we don’t get the chance to watch movies from Chile that often and there is no cultural, social or political dimension to that story to make it worth it.

Director: Dominga Sotomayor – Actors: Santi Ahumada, Emiliano Freifeld – Running Time: 1:36 – Year: 2012 – Country: Chile

The post Thursday Till Sunday appeared first on Plume Noire.

Crystal Fairy And The Magical Cactus And 2012 – yes this is the actual title! – follows 3 Chilean brothers (director Sebastián Silva’s real life siblings) and one American dude (Jamie – Michael Cera) as they embark on a psychedelic journey to find a hallucinogenic cactus. On the way, they pick up a hippieish American girl (Crystal – Gaby Hoffman) who will spice things up.

While the premise looked good on paper, I didn’t know what to expect from Mr. Silva’s new film as I hadn’t embraced his most famous work to date, The Maid, as much as everybody else. His new effort takes however a welcome opposite direction, substituting dryness and graveness with some unabashed fun.

The first thing you should know is that Crystal Fairy isn’t a pro – or anti – drug movie. The cactus is just a pretext to witness their foolish journey and, to be fair, whenever they are intoxicated, they look more like fools than cool guys.

Mr. Silva based his script on personal experience, both characters and settings sounding true despite being quite extravagant. The story about a group of guys hitting the desert for some weekend of debauchery  is one that lots of people can relate to – at least if, like me, you live in California. Also, on a similar note, I actually know a girl like Crystal – and yes by this, I mean a carefree hairy hippie wannabe dominatrix!

You will also probably be amused by the portrait Mr. Silva brushes of Americans visiting his country. While we already went over Crystal’s case, Jamie is one of these nerds hoping to be cool – and actually find acceptance – thanks to drugs. His egocentric character is both annoying and hilarious, depicted as some kind of Woody Allen on speed. While those two characters might look like caricatures, what the director is actually showing is that a certain type of American tourists comes visit his country, Chile. You might easily understand why the filmmaker – and Chileans in general – might be irritated by this and for having traveled quite a bit, I can attest that obnoxious stereotypes of backpackers and foreign party-goers can be found everywhere, from Peru to India and Jamaica.

While the film doesn’t lack amusing moments, performances are the essence of Cristal Fairy, more particularly when it comes to the two leading characters. Mr. Cera is able to both get under your skin and make you laugh, being particularly at ease in another geeky incarnation – just watch him do yoga or run away with the cactus. As for Gaby Hoffman, she is fearless, which isn’t surprising from Viva Hoffman’s offspring – in case you were wondering her mom was Andy Warhol’s leading actress for a while.  She embodies a careless, slightly crazy but ultimately sweet character and spends quite some time wondering in the nude – and those scenes are less than flattering as the boys nicknamed her hairy fairy.

When the end comes, the characters realize that their road trip wasn’t just about getting high but also about self-discovery. Both the culminating drug sequence and this easy conclusion are far from being original but what really matters here isn’t the destination but the journey – and Mr. Silva certainly knows how to plan a fun trip.

Director: Sebastián Silva – Actors: Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann – Running Time: 1:40 – Year: 2013 – Country: Chile

The post Crystal Fairy appeared first on Plume Noire.

Family Life movie poster

Leaving for France for a few months, Bruno (Cristian Carvajal) and Consuelo (Blanca Lewin – En La Cama) ask a distant cousin (Martin – Jorge Becker), to housesit and take care of their cat Mississippi while they’re gone. Despite vaguely knowing the reputation of the aimless 40-year old man, they decide to trust him but unsurprisingly, he starts going through their things, pees in the plants, moves stuff around and loses the cat. Upon looking for Mississippi, he meets Pachi (Gabriela Arancibia), a single mother, and soon enough she and her son end up staying with him, becoming a new family.

Chances are you know people like Martin – I sure do – and with such a setting, there are certainly plenty of opportunities for comedy, which is what I was expecting. What I discovered was however a simple but surprisingly moving work about a doomed, lonely soul who has no boundaries.  Like a lot of hapless 40-year olds, Martin is a rebellious teenager trapped in a middle-aged man. He wears a leather jacket and sunglasses, listens to music loud, smokes cigarettes and doesn’t care about anything.  Everything has been meticulously placed in the quite sophisticated townhouse, including books and a music keyboard, allowing Martin to live a hedonistic Bohemian lifestyle for months.  Under the surface, he however seems to look for the normality of a family life but isn’t able to assume his responsibilities.

While I’m not familiar with Mr. Zambra’s novels, I’m not surprised he has contributed to the New Yorker as Family Life is written in a highly enjoyable candid and witty style. As for the filmmakers, they almost turn us into voyeurs, making us witness Martin’s nonchalance without holding back, whether he’s walking around naked or having sex – at times it almost made me feel like I was watching a French film. They also excel at revealing characters’ emotions, even if we only see them for a few moments as it’s the case for Bruno and Consuelo. They also add light doses or humor and poetic tones but the movie’s main strength is undoubtedly its capacity at making Martin a flawed likeable figure, his freedom making him shamelessly attractive to both Consuelo and the audience.

The post Family Life appeared first on Plume Noire.

Jesús movie poster

The post Jesús review appeared first on Plume Noire.

The story of French lawyer and adventurer Orélie-Antoine de Tounens could certainly have made for a good straightforward adventure film. Born in 1825, this self-proclaimed King of Patagonia was voted a monarch by Araucanía tribe leaders, got arrested several times, put on trial by the Chilean government, deported to France, robbed, was deemed insane, wrote several memoirs and traveled quite a bit between Europe and South America. While there is more than enough real-life drama to create a crazed and luxuriant early Werner Herzog’s style epic (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo), video artist and filmmaker Niles Atallah rather delivered a surprising experimental work that could belong in museums.

Filmed in distorted 8/16mm and sometimes featuring characters wearing oversized papier-mache masks, Mr. Atallah’s work is filled with metaphors, walking a fine line between reality and hallucinations. The fact that Mr. de Tounens’s exploits cannot be fully verified leaves a great place for interpretation which the director exploits. Through the use of masks, he tells us that what we’re watching is a reenactment, preferring to offer his own poetic version, rather than pretending to stick to historical facts. Besides the worn-out cinematography and performance-like mise-en-scene, King also follows a non-linear narrative structure, this fragmented storytelling being used as a metaphor for the character’s troubled psyche.

While I do enjoy Mr. Atallah’s taste for experimentation, his movie featuring quite a few intriguing and haunting moments, I’m afraid he might lose some of the audience in the process, the movie’s structure and style making it too challenging for most spectators. Even if, as a Frenchman, I was familiar with the story, I must admit I was left puzzled a couple times. A daring avant-garde work, King is stimulating but, like its central character, too excessive to appropriately convey an otherwise exceptional true story.

The post King appeared first on Plume Noire.