Gloria [2013]

 The 2010s has been a fascinating decade in terms of films fiercely centered on middle-aged women – defiant in their dreams and desires, boldly confronting insecurities and despair, challenging social expectations – and vividly portrayed in their complexities through stunning performances. In that striking list – comprising of Things to Come, Elena, Julieta, Clouds of Sils Maria, Poetry, Elle, 45 Years, Mia Madre, Aquarius, La Vérité, Let the Sunshine In, etc. – Sebastián Lelio’s vibrant, bittersweet, exuberant, melancholic and beautifully realized gem Gloria finds a well-deserved place. Its protagonist Gloria (Paulina García) is 58-year old single, independent Santiago woman divorced over 10 years back and with grown-up children having lives of their own. She’s dazzling, carefree and still attractive, loves to swing to her favourite tracks, and lives life alone but on her own terms; however, she’s also quietly lonely, and hence, desirous of company, she frequents lonely hearts clubs and discos in search of relationships. Her days of aloneness seemingly end when she befriends Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), an older, recently divorced, well-to-do retired naval officer (possibly from the Pinochet days). He, however, is overly close to her grown-up daughters who’re emotionally and financially dependent on him, and that keeps creating nagging frictions – he avoids introducing her to his family, keeps answering their incessant calls and even leaves midway during an intimate get-together with Gloria’s family – until it just goes too far, leading to a stunning retribution by her. García gave a marvelously endearing turn, while Lelio’s terrific use of music – as in A Fantastic Woman – was eclectic and counterpointed both the blues and joie de vivre, leading to a heartwarming finale memorably set against the Italian song, you guessed it, ‘Gloria’.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Sebastian Lelio

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile

The Pearl Button [2015]

 Chile’s spellbinding geographic diversity makes it a delight for natural science enthusiasts; however, it’s also a country beset with grievous open wounds and guilt, which makes it a deeply troubling canvas for ethnologists, historians and the politically conscious. Patricio Guzmán had explored this strange duality in his magnificent essay film Nostalgia for the Light, and he made it even more powerful in his extraordinarily poetic, poignant, meditative and haunting follow-up The Pearl Button – the second chapter in his ‘Chile Trilogy’ that he completed with The Cordillera of Dreams. From the harsh and brutally arid Atacama Desert, he shifted his examination here to Chile’s vast coastal line in general, and the breathtaking Patagonian region and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago in particular – with water being the central tenet in not just how it giveth, but also taketh away by serving as mass graves. Two devastating historical accounts formed the central strands – the genocide committed by Spanish and English colonialists against the indigenous tribes by upending their their traditional ways of life, turning them into second-class citizens forever, and ultimately even clinically exterminating them; and the disappearings of political dissidents by Pinochet’s fascist military dictatorship, their torture and murder at the notorious Dawson Island concentration camp, and the disposal of thousands into the Pacific. A heart-wrenching connecting thread referencing the film’s title capped its political importance and emotional eloquence, viz. “Jemmy Button” who was “civilized” in exchange of a paltry pearl button; and another pearl button that was found at the bottom of the sea, affixed to a rusted iron deadweight – which were used to drown the dead bodies – as the sole remnant of the nameless political prisoner it’d belonged to.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Patricio Guzman

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Political History

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile

A Fantastic Woman [2017]

 In A Fantastic Woman Sebastián Lelio chronicled a tale of grief, loss and mourning, through the lens of a marginalized transgender woman. The parallel portrayals within the same frame – viz. universality of the former and particularity of the latter, by having the emotionally affecting human drama meet midway the furious sociopolitical commentaries – was perhaps the film’s most joyous quality. And, the audacious decision to actually cast a trans woman (Daniela Vega) in the protagonist’s role – reminding one a bit of the bold and brilliant casting of gender fluid Bengali filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh in Arekti Premer Galpo and Chitrangada – made it all the more stirring; that she gave a spellbinding performance too was the icing. Marina (Vega), who’s yet to biologically transition, and works as a night club singer and a restaurant waiter, is in a passionate affair with Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a much older and well-to-do cis man whose sexual defiance has estranged his family. Their cocooned little world in an otherwise conservative milieu that severely frowns upon their relationship, however, comes crashing when he abruptly dies of aneurysm. The condescension, disparagement, hostility, harassment and violence that Marina faces – from Orlando’s embittered ex-wife (Aline Küppenheim), his vicious son (Nicolás Saavedra) and a cop from the sex crimes division (Amparo Noguera) – takes her to the precipice by dismissing her sense of loss and disallowing her right to grief. The film’s excellent soundtrack – a peppy crooning by Vega of Héctor Lavoe’s “Your love is like yesterday’s newspaper” and Aretha Franklin’s A Natural Woman were the highlights – coupled with a haunting score and fine depictions of both the elegant and grimier sides of Santiago, made it all the more elegiac and visceral.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Sebastian Lelio

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile

I Wish [2011]

 Kore-eda’s I Wish can possibly be deconstructed along multiple lines – as a commentary on marital breakdown and its effects on children, observation on the pop-cultural significance of bullet trains in Japan, and even as an evocation on living adjacent to an active volcano. However, what this essentially remains above all is an unassuming and heartwarming children’s movie, and a rare kind in that all its weightier facets were subsumed by the simple joys, bleary-eyed hopes, fantastical dreams, quiet sorrows and surprisingly profound realizations of kids. At the centre of this gently amusing film were two real-life brothers who Kore-eda cast as siblings split along both familial and geographical fronts on account of their parents’ acrimonious separation – the stoical 10-year old Koichi (Koki Maeda) who stays with his mother and loving maternal grandparents in the southern city of Kagoshima, and the goofy 8-year old Ryu Ohshirô Maeda) who lives with his easy-going dad who alternates between a rock band and the job of a labourer. Though the parents aren’t on talking terms, the brothers speak to each other regularly, i.e. when they’re not in school or hanging out with their close set of buddies. Interestingly, while Koichi, despite his seemingly stolid demeanour, craves to have the family back together, Ryu is secretly contented with the current status quo. However, upon being told that wishes made while witnessing two crossing bullet trains come true, the two, along with their gang of equally cute pals, secretly plan a memorably adventurous trip. The lovely, spontaneous turns by the young actors was undoubtedly the most enduring aspect of the film while the adult actors, comprising of Kore-eda regulars, were happy to play supporting roles.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

Genre: Drama/Family Drama

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

Nostalgia for the Light [2010]

Observations into, excavations from and interpretations of the past were the key philosophical, existential and political themes in the stirring, introspective and brilliantly conceived essay film Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán – the dissident Chilean filmmaker who’s spent nearly his entire life analyzing, dissecting and documenting Pinochet’s fascist, repressive and murderous military dictatorship. Hence, another crucial theme here, as in perhaps his filmography in general, was the politics of memory and the defiant refusal to “move on”. Three parallel strands were deftly juxtaposed against each other for a powerful and evocative portrayal of these themes, with the harsh landscape of the Atacama Desert acting as the connecting hinge. Astronomers at an observatory gaze millions of years into the past by looking at the cosmos and galaxies; archeologists pry at artefacts from a thousand years back; and these were both correlated and counterpointed by individuals attempting to reconcile with the open scars they’re still carrying, by digging out skeletons – both real and metaphorical – from the murderous regime. In that final strand – undeniably the central one – we see ageing women, akin to the “half widows” of Kashmir, battling with grief and despair while searching for bodies of their “disappeared” loved ones buried under the sands; men recollecting their experiences as political prisoners in the concentration camp of Chacabuco that was located there; and a young woman sharing painful memories of seeing her parents being taken aware forever. What therefore emerged were intertwined topics at once grand and intimate, and a fierce desire to seek troubling answers even if many in the country – both citizens and the governments – might’ve conveniently decided to forget the past by closing their eyes to it.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Patricio Guzman

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Political History

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile