Tag Archives: Chile

Chameleon (2016)

13 Thursday Dec 2018

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Original title: Camaleón

D: Jorge Riquelme Serrano / 80m

Cast: Gastón Salgado, Paula Zúñiga, Paulina Urrutia, Alejandro Goic

For couple Paulina (Urrutia) and Paula (Zúñiga), it’s the morning after a party for their friends to say goodbye to Paulina before she embarks on a trip to England. Their house overlooking the ocean is a mess, but Paula soon sets to cleaning up, while Paulina showers and gets dressed. They share breakfast together, then while Paula tends to a sink that’s overflowed, there’s a knock at the front door. Paulina opens the door to find Gastón (Salgado), there on behalf of their mutual friend, Franco (Goic), who has sent Gastón to apologise for Franco’s rude behaviour at the party. Franco has sent wine glasses that Paulina likes, and a bottle of wine. Paula is a little dismayed by Gastón’s arrival, as she was expecting to spend the day alone with Paulina, but the pair make Gastón welcome, and soon the wine has been poured, and the three of them are discussing various matters related to their jobs, and as time goes on, the relationship between the two women. As Paula becomes more and more drunk from the wine, animosities are revealed, and when she becomes incapacitated, Gastón’s true reason for being there is revealed…

A slow, carefully paced thriller that is unsettling to watch on several occasions, Chameleon is also a telling drama that examines themes surrounding sexual identity and class. When we first meet Gastón, it’s in a prologue that shows him flirting and being intimate with Franco, and so when he later admits that he’s only known Franco since the night before, no one is surprised, and it all seems like a normal occurrence. And Serrano is in no hurry to disabuse the viewer of this idea, even though Gastón is wearing one of Franco’s shirts, and Franco can’t be contacted. Gastón’s presence seems plausible enough, and even though Paulina suspects him of lying about his work, there’s no sense that he’s there for any other reason than the one he’s mentioned. Instead, the greater threat – if any at this stage – comes from the adversarial nature of the two women’s relationship. Paulina is the boss, while Paula adopts a more servile attitude, but the wine allows Paula to express her true feelings about Paulina’s superior attitude, and the lack of a child in their relationship. Throughout all this bickering and emotional unloading, Gastón remains calm and quietly supportive of both of them, and seems genuinely concerned when Paula begins to feel unwell.

This all accounts for the first half of the movie, and Serrano maintains a slow build up that shows a calculated restraint in setting up what is a much darker, less “normal” second half. What happens once Paula is put to bed is a nightmare scenario that plays out in a matter-of-fact way that is augmented by Serrano’s decision to make the viewer an unwilling observer. Ensuring that the camera is there to record what happens instead of providing the viewpoint for any one of the characters, Serrano challenges the audience to keep looking, even though there’s nothing graphic to see. Instead, he builds on the menace that has been there from the beginning, from that unremarkable prologue with Gastón and Franco, and tightens the screws accordingly. It’s a home invasion movie with a grim sense of foreboding about it, and it’s one that doesn’t supply the viewer with any easy answers as to Gastón’s motives (some can be guessed at, but none are definitive). There are solid performances from Salgado and Zúñiga (Urrutia’s character is too one-dimensional to be entirely effective), and Cristián Petit-Laurent’s cinematography is disposed primarily to unnerve the viewer, something that it achieves with verve. And then there’s the ending…

Rating: 8/10 – an undeniably tough watch from the halfway mark onwards, Chameleon is a dark, uncompromising thriller that knows how to make the viewer uneasy – even when they’re not sure why they should be; an impressive debut from Serrano, it’s a movie that’s best approached with as little knowledge about it as possible, and with a willingness on the viewer’s part to accept that the painstaking build up of the first half is a necessary precursor to what follows.

The Summit (2017)

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Original title: La cordillera

D: Santiago Mitre / 114m

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi, Erica Rivas, Gerardo Romano, Héctor Díaz, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Alfredo Castro, Paulina García, Leonardo Franco, Elena Anaya, Christian Slater

At the beginning of The Summit, one thing is made abundantly clear: that as Argentina’s recently elected President Blanco (Darín) is on the verge of travelling to Chile to take part in a summit arranged to discuss the setting up of a South American version of OPEC, there’s trouble waiting in the wings in the form of his son-in-law. Blanco may have been involved in a misappropriation of state funds before he became president. His team of advisors are worried about the possible repercussions if this knowledge becomes public, but with the summit just a day away, they decide to play a waiting game. Blanco makes one decision, though: he arranges for his daughter, Marina (Fonzi), to be brought out to the remote Andean hotel all the delegates are staying at. Perhaps she can provide some insight into her husband’s motives, even though they’re separated.

And so, the first of four separate plot strands is woven into place. Soon there will be the political machinations that go hand in hand with a number of countries all vying to get a large piece of the pie from assembling a mult-national oil conglomerate. Marina will suffer a breakdown that will reveal one of two things: a dark family secret, or a darker personal tragedy. And to wrap things up, Blanco will be put in a position that will make or break him as a hero of his country (this plot strand arrives a little late but it’s there nonetheless). It’s an ambitious mix of storylines, but stitched together awkwardly and with each strand causing problems for the others. Will Blanco be able to find a way out of the dilemma posed by his son-in-law? Will Marina’s breakdown bring her father’s presidency crashing down around his ears? Will Brazil, the guiding force behind the oil summit, get its own way at the expense of a better option? And will Blanco, faced with making a momentous decision that could backfire on him just as easily as it could be the making of him, survive everything that’s being thrown at him?

To answer all those questions, would inevitably, negate any reasons to watch this movie in the first place. But the answers themselves aren’t as compelling as they could have been. Without giving too much away, one answer can be guessed easily, another is resolved by an unexpected event, one could go either way, and the last is – very strangely – a mix of all three. As to which of those coded answers matches which plot strand, that would be telling, but it’s enough to also say that director Mitre and his co-screenwriter, Mariano Llinás, have attempted to tell a political drama that continually stops to explore the private lives of two of its main characters, and often forgets for long stretches that there’s even a summit going on (for the most part it seems as if the summit takes place for only an hour or so each day, such is the amount of time that Blanco has to deal with all the other issues that crop up).

Where it might have been a good idea to devote equal time and emphasis to all the various strands, and make them part of a slowly evolving (and involving) narrative, Mitre decides instead to concentrate on each one as if they were unconnected to each other. This leads to abrupt transitions of both tone and pacing, as when the summit is forgotten about in order for Marina’s breakdown to be explored in ever greater detail (and long enough for an Argentinian doctor (Castro) to be flown in to treat her). Likewise the arrival of Slater’s US government representative, which requires a hush-hush meeting with Blanco that again calls for him to be away from the summit for a length of time that in any other political thriller, would have the other delegates looking at him with dark suspicion. It’s at moments like these that Mitre seems unable to decide what’s more important: the basic set up of the summit, or the other stories he and Llinás have concocted in order to pad out the running time.

With its inelegant narrative that flits back and forth and never really lets the viewer get comfortable with what’s happening, The Summit has too many longueurs that bring it up sharply and require something of a kick start to get things moving again. Mitre also wants us to invest heavily in the relationship between Blanco and Marina, but thanks to the decision to take a side-step into psychological thriller territory, the issues each has with the other are allowed to be subsumed in a game of guess-the-truth, a game that could have been intriguing and more absorbing if it wasn’t dropped as soon as the movie needed too get back to the summit and wrap things up in a nice neat bow. Like a lot of the movie’s attempts at providing a probing, incisive narrative to draw in its audience, the end result provides instead a feeling that’s more akin to frustration than satisfaction.

Against all this, the cast struggle gamely with roles that often prove perfunctory, with even the usually dependable Darín unable to make much headway with a script that paints Blanco as a politician somewhat out of his depth on the world stage, and never really changes or challenges that assessment. As the daughter with a range of issues that every politican’s daughter seems to have, Fonzi does stary-eyed before emotion, and always seems half a beat behind where her character needs to be in any given scene. Rivas is good as the president’s loyal personal secretary, Cacho makes an impression as a Machiavellian Mexican president, and Anaya has a small role as a journalist who pops up here and there to ask “difficult” questions of the countries’ leaders. But the acting is often left to fend for itself at the expense of the material, and only Javier Julia’s crisp cinematography is allowed to furnish any respite from the dull stetches that hamper the movie’s ability to keep its audience from being truly engaged with it.

Rating: 6/10 – ponderous when it should be exciting, clumsy when it should be gripping, The Summit is an unfortunate title for a movie that never hits any creative heights, and which remains stranded at ground level throughout; somewhere in its screenplay are the makings of two, better, thrillers, but it’s unlikely now that we’ll ever see them, something that is more affecting by itself than the movie as a whole.

NOTE: The following trailer doesn’t have any English language subtitles, but it does give a good sense of the movie itself.

Gun Shy (2017)

10 Sunday Sep 2017

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Original title: Salty

D: Simon West / 91m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Olga Kurylenko, Mark Valley, Martin Dingle Wall, Aisling Loftus, Fernando Godoy, David Mitchell, Jesse Johnson, Ben Cura, Jeremy Swift, Anna Francolini, Emiliano Jofre

Based on the novel Salty by co-screenwriter Mark Haskell Smith, the retitled Gun Shy is officially the world’s first equity crowd funded Hollywood movie… which in effect means, you may have a script and you may have talent attached to the project, but it still doesn’t mean the movie should get made. This is definitely the case with Gun Shy, a movie that juggles drama, comedy, romance and action with all the skill of a blind man whose fingers have been glued together. It’s also another movie that makes the viewer question why it was made at all, other than to give the cast and crew the chance of visiting Chile, where most of the action takes place. Perhaps the clue is in the phrase “world’s first equity crowd funded Hollywood movie”. After all, if you can’t even get “real” Hollywood to finance your movie project, then just how good is it?

In this particular case, not very good at all. It’s meant to be a wacky comedy, with Antonio Banderas’ washed-up musician, Turk Henry, sulking in his Malibu home following his having been let go from the band he helped form, Metal Assassin, and which has since gone on to mega-stardom. Turk won’t leave the house, behaves like a spoilt, whiny child, and is married to his long-suffering wife, ex-supermodel Sheila (Kurylenko), whom he met when they were both in rehab. Determined to get Turk out of the house, Sheila blackmails him into making a trip to his home country of Chile (though Turk always tells people he’s English and from London, even though he has a strong Spanish accent). Once there, and at the hotel, Turk just wants to stay by the pool drinking beer, while Sheila is more interested in getting out and experiencing Chilean culture. When Turk discovers that Sheila has been kidnapped along with a couple of British tourists, and is being held for ransom by a group of would-be pirates, his attempt to secure her release by paying a million dollars is hampered by US embassy official Ben Harding (Valley).

Harding wants to use the kidnappings to win promotion by apprehending the so-called “terrorists” (his phrase). He forbids Turk from paying the ransom, and confiscates the money when Turk tries to go ahead with paying the kidnappers. Meanwhile, Sheila is using the time with her abductors, led by Juan Carlos (Cura), to examine more closely the relationship she has with Turk, and how satisfactory it is; naturally she’s not impressed with its current state. Turk though, hasn’t given up trying to get her back. He enlists the aid of one of his agent’s employees, Marybeth (Loftus), and through her, a specialist security agent called Clive Muggleton (Wall). With Harding still trying to win the day by himself and doing all he can to foil their efforts, Turk, Marybeth and Clive concoct a plan to pay the ransom. But will it work?

The more appropriate question might be, will anyone care? Turk and Sheila do deserve each other, but not in a grand romantic fashion, but rather in a no-one-else-would-put-up-with-their-selfish-attitudes kind of way. Turk wants Sheila back because he can’t live without her, but that’s because she organises his life and he can’t function without her. And yet, when she’s kidnapped he does exactly that, and does pretty well for himself in the bargain. He still behaves in a silly, empty-headed manner, but that’s due largely to the way that the script portrays him, and is less to do with Banderas’ performance, which is grating for the most part and dispiriting for the rest. Faced with a main character who is less than sympathetic, and with a situation where you could be forgiven for thinking that being kidnapped is an opportunity to live a better life (with the kidnappers, who at least know what they want: ships), the couple’s marriage would be better served dramatically if this was the beginning of the end. Unfortunately, this isn’t the approach the movie wants to take, so it makes Sheila’s navel-gazing over ther marriage purely something for Kurylenko to do while she waits for her character to be rescued.

With Turk and Sheila’s relationship lacking credibility, the movie struggles elsewhere as well, with the aims and goals of the kidnappers – literally, to have ships so that they can call themselves pirates – being portrayed in such a ridiculous way that the idea remains laughable whenever it’s brought up. They’re basically nice guys playing at being bad, and they aren’t very successful at it. This leaves Harding as the movie’s big bad, and he’s played by Valley in such a way that you can’t take him seriously no matter how hard Valley tries. There’s also a sub-plot involving Turk’s agent, John Hardigger (Mitchell), which doesn’t come into its own until the last ten minutes, and which feels like an after thought to the main narrative (although it does make better use of Mitchell during that time than it does Banderas for the whole movie).

Crowd-funded or not, Gun Shy is a movie that mistakes silliness for humour, and doesn’t attempt to take itself seriously. It wastes the time and efforts of its cast, plays fast and loose with its kidnapping plot, labours the point in respect to Harding’s ambitious personality, and seems to have been directed on auto pilot by West, who can’t even make the occasional action sequence anything more than laboured (a chase/taser attack by Harding on Muggleton is poorly staged and less than thrilling). The early scenes drag on unnecessarily, and the middle section is hampered by the need to stretch things out in terms of the drama (what there is of it). Amazingly though, the final half hour does see the movie pick up, and the pacing and material appear energised in comparison to the rest of the movie. Some of it is even funny at this stage, which makes you wonder why the movie as a whole wasn’t treated in the same way. With this and Security (2017), Banderas isn’t having the best of years, and the rest of the cast do what they can, but Smith’s script (co-written with Toby Davies) isn’t as well structured or funny as was perhaps originally intended. Even the Chilean locations don’t look their best, and if you can’t get that right, then something is very seriously wrong indeed.

Rating: 4/10 – though it should have been a slick comedy adventure movie, Gun Shy is undermined by lacklustre pacing, no one to root for, laughs that land with a thud, and leaden direction from West; only Wall and Loftus emerge with any credit from the cast, and only by dint of the effort they put in, but otherwise this is yet another movie that plays out in an exotic foreign location to very little effect except for providing everyone with a working holiday.

Grimsby (2016)

28 Saturday May 2016

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Grimsby

aka The Brothers Grimsby

D: Louis Leterrier / 83m

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Penélope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Ian McShane, Rebel Wilson, Barkhad Abdi, Gabourey Sidibe, Scott Adkins, Annabelle Wallis, Johnny Vegas, Ricky Tomlinson

Grimsby - scene1

Just avoid. This is a movie whose “comic” highlight is its lead characters hiding in an elephant’s vagina while it’s being penetrated by another elephant – and then the other elephant ejaculates. Fans of Baron Cohen will probably enjoy this but anyone else will be wondering how on earth this was ever made, and if they manage to get through to the end, they’ll also be wondering how they can get eighty-three minutes of their lives back.

Rating: 3/10 – yet another example of gross-out humour being more important than properly constructed comedy, Baron Cohen’s latest offering is so bad you hope he’s never allowed to make another movie of his own ever again; wasting the talents of a good cast (spare a thought for Penélope Cruz, appearing in this and Zoolander 2 in the same year), and giving new meaning to the word ‘puerile’, Grimsby is competently made but embarrassing at almost every turn.

The 33 (2015)

29 Sunday Nov 2015

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The 33

D: Patricia Riggen / 127m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Rodrigo Santoro, Juliette Binoche, Lou Diamond Phillips, Gabriel Byrne, Mario Casas, Jacob Vargas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nuñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño, Adriana Barraza, Kate del Castillo, Cote de Pablo, Naomi Scott, Bob Gunton, James Brolin

On 5 August 2010, thirty-three men working at the San José copper-gold mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert, found themselves trapped seven hundred metres underground when there was a major cave-in. What happened over the ensuing sixty-nine days captured the attention of the world, as the Chilean government overcame numerous obstacles in its attempts to rescue the men and restore them to their families. The men – thirty-two Chileans and one Bolivian – were a mix of mine workers and technical support workers, and they survived in an area called The Refuge, albeit with meagre rations that would only last them a few days unless strictly rationed. As an example of the human will to survive against incredible odds and adversity, there are fewer recent examples that can match the story of the 33.

With such an incredible story to tell, The 33 should have been a sure-fire winner, but somewhere along the way, the makers dropped the ball, leaving the movie lacking focus and tension throughout. We meet several of the miners on the day before their fateful shift, with Banderas’ Mario Sepúlveda and Phillips’ Luis ‘Don Lucho’ Urzúa strongly to the fore. With the quality of their home lives established, and how well they’re respected made clear, we move to the next day and meet some of the other men, such as alcoholic Darío Segovia (Raba), and husband caught between wife and mistress Yonni Barrios (Nuñez). And then there’s unlucky Bolivian Carlos Mamani (Huerta), starting his first day at the mine and completely unaware, like all the others, of what’s going to happen.

The 33 - scene4

Once inside the mine, and its winding corridors that lead down and down into the bowels of a mountain, the men begin their work but soon realise that they’re in terrible danger. Here the movie becomes a disaster epic, as the mountain collapses around them in spectacular fashion and the lights go out. So far, so good. But once the disaster has happened, the movie loses its grip on the story, and the ensuing struggle for survival juggles for time and attention with the rescue mission going on above ground. This has the effect of lessening the drama of both strands and giving the movie a stately pace that undermines the movie’s effectiveness even further.

By trying to focus on both the survivors and the rescue attempt – spearheaded by Santoro’s Laurence Golborne, the Minister of Mining – the script by Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten and Michael Thomas becomes an uneasy mix of pedestrian thriller and soap operatics, as below ground, Sepúlveda becomes the unofficial leader, while on the surface, Binoche’s forceful María Segovia (Dario’s sister) cajoles and embarrasses the Chilean government into rescuing her brother and his colleagues. It becomes pretty formulaic stuff, even down to the moment when, with the rescue mission on the verge of being called off, María says something to Golborne that gives him the idea that saves the day. It’s an awkward, cheesy moment, and neither Binoche or Santoro can do much with it to make it sound convincing.

The 33 - scene3

By and large the plight of the men is downplayed, particularly once their rations run out. A big chunk of time goes by without any reference to how the men maintained their morale, or the general physical well-being that allowed them to survive for so long. Sepúlveda is kept at the forefront, while the majority of the other men are painted in broad brush strokes; only Dario’s going cold turkey has any impact, and even then it’s quite muted. Banderas is reliable enough as the de facto leader, but it’s Phillips as the guilt-ridden ‘Don Lucho’ who stands out from the crowd, delivering the movie’s best performance by a By the movie’s end, even the sense of relief that every man was rescued is less enervating than it should be, with even the celebrations of the families feeling perfunctory and blandly choreographed.

Leading the rescue team, Santoro is too fresh-faced to be a Minister of Mining (especially as he doesn’t know the first thing about it), while Byrne’s grizzled drilling expert is seen throwing in the towel too often for his credentials to be that impressive. Brolin appears towards the end when the drilling effort becomes an internationa one, but he has so few lines and makes so little impression that the only thing that’s impressive is that he gets fourth billing in the credits. Representing the families, Binoche’s mix of agitator and social conscience is saddled with the unlikely prospect of an attraction to Santoro that feels like a clumsy attempt to shoehorn a degree of (unnecessary) romance into the story.

The 33 - scene2

But above all, The 33 is a movie that plods along doing just enough to look like it knows what it’s doing, but thanks to Riggen’s by-the-numbers direction it never becomes as tense or dramatic as it should be given the situation and the lives at stake. At least Checco Varese’s cinematography isn’t as staid, with sun-drenched vistas on offer above ground, and claustrophobic shadows below ground. And there’s a fine, wistful score courtesy of the late James Horner that lifts the movie whenever it’s included. Good as these elements are, however, they still only work to prop up a movie that gets more things wrong than right.

Rating: 6/10 – disappointing and onerous, the story of one of the most amazing survival/rescue events in recent history is treated in such a lacklustre way that it feels as if the men are being let down a second time (they’ve never received any compensation for their ordeal); subsumed by too many disaster clichés, The 33 lacks a sense of real danger and makes a remarkable story feel merely ordinary in the telling.

To Kill a Man (2014)

04 Sunday Jan 2015

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To Kill a Man

Original title: Matar a un hombre

D: Alejandro Fernández Almendras / 82m

Cast: Daniel Candia, Alejandra Yañez, Daniel Antivilo, Ariel Mateluna, Jennifer Salas, Don Willie, Paula Leoncini

Jorge (Candia) is a quiet family man who works as a caretaker at a forest research site. One night he’s mugged near to his home by a man called Kulale (Antivilo) and some of his gang; they steal his money and his insulin kit. He tells his wife, Marta (Yañez) and Jorgito (Mateluna). Jorgito knows who Kulale is and tells his father that he can get his insulin kit back for 5,000 pesos. Jorge demurs but later that night he realises his son has gone out. He goes to look for him and hears a gunshot from the nearby projects. He finds Jorgito has been shot. As he tends to him, Kulale appears and, weighing up the situation, shoots and wounds himself.

While Jorgito spends three months in hospital recovering, Kulale’s prosecution goes ahead. He contends Jorge and his son attacked and shot him first and he was defending himself when he shot Jorgito, but the court rules against him. To the family’s shock, however, his sentence is restricted to eighteen months due to a technicality. Following the trial, cracks begin to appear in Jorge and Marta’s marriage, and she blames him for Jorgito’s being shot.

Two years pass. Jorge and Marta are now divorced, though he visits his family often. One day at work he receives a call from Kulale who tells him he’s not finished with Jorge and his family and that they have a debt to settle. This proves to be the beginning of a campaign of harassment carried out by Kulale and his gang, which includes abusive phone calls, trapping Jorgito in the back of his truck, throwing rocks at the family home, and assaulting Jorge’s teenage daughter, Nicole (Salas). Each time, Jorge and his family report the incidents but the police and the prosecutor’s office seem unconcerned or unwilling to proceed without any witnesses.

Realising that the chances of anything being done to stop Kulale’s harassment and intimidation of his family are minimal, Jorge decides to take matters into his own hands. One night he lures Kulale out of his home and forces him at gunpoint into the back of Jorgito’s truck. It’s at this point that Jorge must decide if killing Kulale is the right course of action, and if it is, if he can go through with it.

To Kill a Man - scene

A sparse, quietly powerful movie, To Kill a Man is an intense, thought-provoking look at the way in which intimidation and bullying can lead even the most reserved of people to take the law into their own hands, and the subsequent ways in which their lives can be affected, both subtly and obviously. It’s a stark, poetic movie, one that carries a tremendous emotional wallop, and which portrays its central character as a simple man trying to lead a simple life, and struggling when that simplicity of existence is threatened.

The emotional turmoil suffered by Jorge and his family is soberly portrayed, and without recourse to melodrama. Their pain and anger is clearly felt and expressed both through their dealings with authority, and through the deteriorating relationship between Jorge and Marta. Even after they’ve divorced there’s a lingering sense of resentment and disapproval that undermines their ability to communicate with each other. Marta wants Jorge to be more assertive, but it’s not really in his nature; he’s a solitary man, even within his own family. Faced with the problem of Kalule and his aggressive behaviour, Jorge reacts as best he can but it’s not enough for Marta or Jorgito. He deflects their anger at the situation and appears weak in the process.

But all this turmoil is having an effect, and thanks to the combination of Almendras’ impressive script and Candia’s riveting portrayal, Jorge’s eventual decision to “deal” with the problem of Kalule displays an inner strength that abrogates any suggestion that he’s too reserved to cope with it all. Bolstered by an encounter on forest land with a man who pulls a knife on him, Jorge takes confidence from his dealing with that situation and commits to a course of action that tests both his sense of morality and his sense of himself as a man. For the viewer it’s a moment where the feeling of holding one’s breath gives way to a sense of relief at Jorge making such an important, difficult decision.

Candia gives a remarkable performance, Jorge’s withdrawn, taciturn nature given full articulation via the actor’s subtly expressive features. It’s a performance that proves unexpectedly gripping, and while the rest of the cast provide more than adequate support, Candia is the emphatic heart and soul of the movie. Even when he’s alone in a scene there’s little doubt as to how he’s feeling, or what he’s thinking. It’s gripping to watch, and a testament to Almendras’s decision to cast him.

As well as an examination of the morality of taking the law into your own hands, the movie also looks at the effects a shocking event can have the family involved, as well as its legacy. Even when they fight back against Kulale by going to the police there’s no real sense of a family united in their efforts, and Almendras rarely shows all four members spending time together. It’s beyond the movie’s scope but it would be interesting to see their reaction to Jorge’s abduction of Kulale and what happens as a consequence. The Chilean legal system comes in for some considerable criticism (though at present it is undergoing a radical change), and some aspects might seem a little far-fetched – the prosecutor’s home address being given out upon request, for example – but it’s all fuel for the predicament Jorge finds himself trying to cope with.

To Kill a Man - scene2

Visually, the movie is a dour experience in keeping with the material, but there are glimpses of the natural beauty in the forest area where Jorge works, plus some stunning coastal scenery. Almendras keeps things straightforward and direct, dispensing with any frills or unnecessary camera flourishes, and maintaining a tight focus on the characters and placing them in various cramped locations to highlight their sense of being hemmed in at all turns. There’s also an ominous score courtesy of Pablo Vergara that accentuates the drama and cleverly pre-empts the emotional result of Kulale’s abduction.

Rating: 9/10 – a striking, intelligently constructed exploration of one man’s alienation from his family and his attempt at redressing the wrongs done to him, To Kill a Man is a modest drama that succeeds by virtue of a strong central performance and a compelling narrative; apparently based on “real events”, Almendras’s third feature is a triumph of low-budget, independent movie making.

Magic Magic (2013)

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

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Magic Magic

D: Sebastián Silva / 97m

Cast: Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Emily Browning, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Agustín Silva

Shot entirely in Chile, Magic Magic is a slow-burn thriller that begins with Alicia (Temple) travelling outside the US for the first time to stay with her friend Sara (Browning).  Alicia is a little shy and unsure of herself, and looks to Sara for support when she fails to impress Sara’s boyfriend Agustín (Silva), and his two friends Barbara (Moreno) and Brink (Cera).  Leaving Santiago for a cabin in the countryside, they get so far when Sara receives a call saying she has to go back to resit one of her exams.  Against Alicia’s wishes, Sara travels back alone, promising to be back the next day.

At the cabin, Alicia repeatedly tries to contact Sara but there’s no signal.  She becomes increasingly restless and that night has trouble sleeping.  The next day, Alicia, Agustín and Brink go hunting with a rifle; Brink shoots a parrot, leaving Alicia disturbed by his cruelty.  Later, Alicia manages to contact Sara, who tells her she now won’t be back until the next day.  Alicia has another bad night, and in the morning is offered pills by Barbara to help her sleep.  Sara arrives and the group (minus Barbara) take a boat to a nearby place called The Rock where there is an outcrop that can be jumped off into the water.  Alicia freezes and, although she is reassured by the others, her behaviour begins to cause them serious concern.  Alicia, maybe through lack of sleep, is erratic, and prone to emotional outbursts; she also has fugue moments.

That night she is hypnotised by Agustín and responds directly to suggestions, even when Brink tells her to put her hand in the fire.  Later, Alicia sleepwalks and causes a disturbance before being found.  The next day there is an altercation between her and Brink which later leads to the discovery that Alicia is taking a lot of medication.  And then that evening, Alicia disappears…

Magic Magic - scene

From the start, Magic Magic takes pains to show us the emotional fragility that Alicia suffers from.  But while we see this time after time (until it becomes annoying – we get it, okay?), there’s no clear explanation for her behaviour, nor if the things that are happening are largely in her head because of some psychological issue, or the side effects of her medication, or even a mixture of both.  The lack of consistency in her behaviour, and in her attitude towards the rest of the group, doesn’t help either, and there are too many occasions when she behaves weirdly, it’s briefly commented on, then it’s on to the next weird moment.  And it doesn’t help that the culmination of all these events makes for a final ten minutes that shoves the movie into a whole different territory.

With the main character acting so strangely – and with little or no explanation to guide the viewer – Magic Magic suffers mightily from being a combination of arthouse and thriller that panders more to arthouse conventions than thriller ones.  In the hands of a more skilled writer/director, this might not have been a problem, but Silva overplays Alicia’s reticence and odd behaviour rather than developing the mystery of what’s happening and why.  Fortunately, the director has a strong ally in Temple, who despite the limitations of her character, puts in a brave, instinctive performance that helps the movie immeasurably.  There’s a moment when she’s walking through a field and encounters a couple of horses.  The moment is infused with a low-key tension – why though, is again left unanswered – but Alicia’s sense of uneasiness is portrayed credibly despite the lack of reasoning behind it.  It’s Temple’s ability to elevate the material in this way that saves the movie from being too diffident and removed.

Cera is the other main draw here, and fares reasonably well as Brink, but again the script has him behave in such a bullying, cowardly manner that his continual taunts and digs at Alicia become more annoying than anything else.  It’s good to see him play such an awful person – aside from his brilliant turn in This Is the End (2013) – but there’s little depth here and it’s hard to see why Agustín and Barbara would put up with him.  Browning fares badly, with the underwritten role of best friend whose return trip to Santiago turns out to be for other reasons but when they are revealed, prove to have no relation or effect on what’s going on with Alicia.  Moreno has little to do except moan about Alicia throughout, while Silva is almost a bystander with little to do except continually apologise for Brink’s bad behaviour.

With so much going on that is left unexplained and/or undeveloped, Magic Magic is a frustrating experience, and the title doesn’t provide any clues either (though it does relate to the movie’s denouement).  It also ends abruptly, leaving the audience even more in the dark than they were at the beginning.  The cast do the best they can under the circumstances and there’s some pleasure to be had from the beautiful Chilean locations, but as an evening’s entertainment you’d be hard pressed to find something less enervating.

Rating: 5/10 – with its writer/director denying his audience a way in to what’s happening, Magic Magic fails to engage or provide a character to sympathise with; good performances aside, this is a disappointing movie that seems happy to be obscure for its own sake.