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MargaretW-46
Reviews
La caja (2021)
Great
Smart, clever multilayered story that keeps you guessing about the relationship of the two main characters. Particularly good is Hatzin Navarrete giving a mostly intense and internalized performance as the young man we follow trying to reconcile his daddy issues. As the film plays against a backdrop of the injustice of cheap labor workers, the central tension builds to a powerful and thoughtful climax.
Venezuela's submission for this year's 95th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. Very much worth a watch. Recommended. Sadly, venezuela seems to have lost this great auteur...........
Autobiography (2022)
Not great
This is my first indonesian film and I think I am going to explore more of its art house stuff to get a deeper understanding about their politics and revolution. Thematically this film didn't say anything that wasn't said before. But the character dynamics were very familiar and spoke of a certain Indian or a South Asian sensibility. I thought the film would experiment with the aspect of Stockholm syndrome and I thought I saw it going in that direction in the karoke scene but it could just be me. It would have been a much more interesting watch for me if that had happened. But again that's just me. That's obviously not what was intended. But playing on a familiar ground with a familiar narrative the direction couldn't have demanded anything more.
El Amparo (2016)
Amazing
EL AMPARO tells the true story of two survivors of an army attack in 1988 Venezuela. The men's fishing party was mistaken for a camp of rebel guerrillas and fired upon; two men escape back to their village and are put in jail, at first on suspicion of being rebels but later to protect them against being kidnapped or murdered. The army naturally doesn't want to admit it made a mistake, so the men are placed under intense pressure to 'confess' to being rebels with vague promises of a quiet amnesty and reward at a later date. Having no faith that the state will hold up its end of the bargain (and not wanting to admit to a crime they didn't commit), the men resist.
This is the case of a film where the content is more important than the style or technical achievement. It's an important story and well worth bringing to the screen. The production and direction are frankly pretty flat and uninteresting, but the performances are quite natural and it was cool to watch the women of the village take the lead and organize to protect the two men (and the memory of their dead husbands / sons / brothers). Solid, worthwhile watch.
Desde Allá (2015)
Pain. And one of the best films of the year.
Golden Lion winner "From Afar" is a dark romance between two men having huge age gap named Armando and Elder respectively. The film is directional debut of Lorenzo Vigas. The film never promised us to deliver a love story between leads however the connection begins to immerge but love between them have lot of tension and there is always a barrier between them even at a emotional current situation. The tight Cinematography manages to capture some best frames with good performances. From Afar" isn't about a gay romance so much as how the tension between these two men challenges the social barriers surrounding them and lack of score balances the tension so well . The ending is something you didn't expected. It's painful.
1976 (2022)
Weird music
Director Manuela Martelli quickly and nicely establishes that we are in Chile during the 1970s with news headlines from black and white tv's pointing to the country in turmoil. We meet a well-dressed Carmen who is planning to redecorate her family's summer house while her husband, a doctor, is away for work. When the local priest asks her to help care for a young man with a gun wound, she accepts without question, lies to get some antibiotics and gets in deeper over her head the longer she helps out. Aline Küppenheim gives a subtle performance for what evolves into a complex character that travels around in a world filled with paranoia. There's a theme with shoes throughout the film whether it's Carmen's expensive high heels splattered with paint or one found with a hole in its soul/sole that contrasts class differences. We know it's during the Pinochet regime and though the danger is rarely if seen at all, there's always a sense of mystery and fear surrounding everything. Carmen doesn't know who to trust or if anyone around her is secretly watching her. You could almost say that the tension is Hitchcockian since we've seen a variety of shoes and don't know exactly when the next one will drop.
Yo y Las Bestias (2021)
Indie
Lives between the space of idealistic artistic expression and real world political turmoil. Me & The Beast is low key and a slow burn featuring some hypnotic music (one of them songs sounds a little too much like Space Oddity, my dude) and clean, clinical compositions. As we follow a middle class, depressed indie fella trying to follow his morals while attempting to complete his music all the while the world around him is actively reminding him the futile nature of his quest. On a particularly powerful scene he's forced to "lend" his guitar to a policeman from the government who clearly has talent but no way to express his gifts even if he wanted to. It's the struggle between doing something that truly matters and doing something for the sake of our own individuality. I just wish it cut a little deeper and showcased more of what it was trying to do. But at a little over 70 mins, it was worth an interesting watch.
La familia (2017)
An essential Latin American film
A certain kind of roughhousing is natural when children play. The Venezuelan film The Family portrays this perfectly in the first scenes when comradeship among boys is expressed with inoffensive name calling and harsh treatment, either through street games or pranks. The kids are fearless or pretend to be, while gangs live nearby and bullets casing are easy to find on the streets. This is Caracas, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. In this context, Pedro (Reggie Reyes), a 12-year-old boy, spends almost his entire time playing outdoors with other kids. His father, Andrés (Giovanni García), is often working late in one of his many jobs (house painter and waiter). They live in a block near a slum, and the mother is probably dead and barely mentioned.
When Pedro and one of his friends are assaulted by another kid, they defend themselves, but the fight escalates, and the attacker is seriously injured. Andrés knows that this situation would bring misfortune to his son; Pedro will suffer retaliation from the gangsters from the shantytown, where the injured youth is from, and so Andrés orders his son to gather his things, and they leave their apartment immediately to avoid retaliation. Pedro doesn't understand the father's decision and confronts his presumed cowardice. The difference between the adult and child is how the two perceive fear.
Venezuela's official and well-deserved submission for foreign-language Oscar, The Family is a solid and strong debut by director Gustavo Rondón Córdova. It is no secret that Venezuela is a country in crisis, with a repressive and corrupt government that resembles more a dictatorship. For Venezuelans, the economically unstable situation has reduced the quality of life. Unlike most Venezuelan movies centered on crime, Andrés and Pablo represent the common people, whose most valuable victory is daily survival.
Almost everybody is at the edge of the law because they have to look out for themselves and advantage of any situation at the expense of others. (Andrés resells alcohol he steals from the parties he caters.) This is a sad but accurate depiction of life in Venezuela: Andrés looks constantly over his shoulders or stops on a corner while the cops are passing. Rondón Córdova presents the family unit as the most human and steadfast resource against succumbing entirely to moral decay, and as the last space where Andrés and Pedro can find true loyalty, even if their understanding of each other is imperfect.
The film's greatest virtue is the way it conveys Venezuelans' hard situation without making a sensational statement. There is no a direct political tone in any scene or dialogue, but small details speak volumes about what is wrong in the country. The movie is also easy to digest thanks to an effective story, and it becomes deeper as it moves along.
La prisión de mi padre (2023)
An act of resistance
I saw this film at visions du réel. I'm flabbergasted at the bravery of this film and the act of love that it means to make something like this. We never see stories from venezuela in festivals, let alone in the news. I felt privileged to be let in into the story of this family. The film is an act of resistance, a cry of help for venezuela, an excavation of pain, memory, and family archive. We are taken into rare spaces of prison, and even the escape from a dictatorship that has displaced 9 million people from what was once the most prosperous Latin American nation. Cinematically the film took me on a visual journey across the years of its making, showing me the brutal reality of venezuela, but also providing a cathartic, bitter-sweet ending. This is a necessary film, not only for the filmmaker, the country of Venezuela, but also evident in its raw and direct aesthetics.
La Fortaleza (2020)
Like nothing you've ever seen before.
A deeply intimate confession. A mirror. A father playing himself as a real-life character who represents a the feeling of a country in complete self-destruction. This is a powerful metaphor of Venezuela. I later learned that all the actors were actually non-professionals who play versions of themselves. I was blown away by this because the performance of the protagonist (the director's father) is one of the most raw and realistic things I've seen in a while. The cinematography was sublime and the editing had a very unique pacing. This is a radical film in all respects. Not an easy watch, but worth it every second.