And let's go for the fifth, What would some say if this were a football championship?. But it's not. We talk about cinema. Fifth day, so, of screenings at La Mostra de València with two very suggestive proposals that come to us from the southern coasts of our Mediterranean Sea.
Con Autumn landscapes, we meet an old acquaintance from the festival, that I would already give him the Golden Palm Tree back in the year 2009 with the tape Harragas, the Algerian director Merzak Allouache. The plot of this latest work that brought us to the contest begins with the body of a teenager found dead on a beach, by the sea. The crime is one more in a series that the police are tracking. But the law is not the only one on the trail of the murderer.. At the same time, a journalist investigates the case of a youth prostitution ring. Pronto, both cases will intersect, uncovering a network of corruption that leads us to the highest levels of power.
In the foreground, Autumn landscapes could be seen as a typical thriller. We have all the elements of the genre. Hay, Of course, a case to solve. We also have a police officer and a journalist who are trying to find the clues to achieve this., and a group of criminals who will try to thwart their plans by using all kinds of obstacles and threats.. However, As the minutes go by we realize that there is something more here.. On a formal level because the position of the camera and the photograph itself, the way in which he resolves the situations posed by the film, They distance us from any attempt to emphasize the facts as the genre has accustomed us to in its most commercial versions.. Merzak Allouache's forms bring us closer to the documentary format, a style decision that has all its logic, as we will see. And with regard to the plot, because the Algerian director sows his script with small elements that point in various directions that, obviously, are the ones that interest you the most.
Thus, Autumn landscapes It is a tape that speaks to us, First, about the exercise of power. Of power, but, above all, of how it is capable of corroding institutions and, very especially, the minds of those it rules. The problem is not that the cases that the protagonist of this story is investigating involve high levels of politics.. The main question is how, as you will see along that journey, The fear of that power has been weaving a network of complicities infecting all layers of that society.. A power that here appears as an invisible monster, but omnipotent, that devours everything and against which it is almost (or almost without) impossible to present opposition and, much less, try to overthrow him.
On the way to this discovery, we meet the journalistic class, first of the director's darts targets. And here the conclusions that the film exposes are very clear.. Para Allouache, Journalism has deserted its main function, which is none other than to be vigilant against the excesses of that power that we are talking about and that it does and undoes at will.. Gripped by fear of consequences, journalism has decided to look the other way. So, while our protagonist tries by all means to uncover what wants to remain hidden., Her bosses try to persuade her not to get into any more trouble. (problems that they themselves want to avoid at all costs). But if the watchman stops watching, what is left? Far from any mythology, Allouache describes the path of one who seeks the truth as a true ordeal. Is it worth it?, everyone seems to ask. The question, of course, hide a trap, although the film confronts us with a painful conclusion. Y, reached this point, although in our Western and democratic societies we feel a frank detachment from the practice of journalism, It is worth watching this film to perceive how things can be where authoritarianism reigns without a true law to control it.. In that sense, the last shot of the movie, that we will not reveal, It's just devastating.
But if there is something that seems to permeate Allouache's entire film, it is a deep pessimism about the situation in his country.. here and there, When faced with the problems or adversities that their characters face, there is someone who wonders, “Do you know how Algeria is??”. The question is, on the one hand, a veiled threat. Don't do anything if you don't want to end badly, they seem to tell. A warning that is an incitement to maintain the established order, well, in these conditions, it is impossible to change things. Why even try? But, above all, For Allouache, the question contains a confirmation and, very clearly, a complaint that resonates on the screen and in the viewer's ears like a bomb. Answering or posing that question justified this intelligent work for the Algerian director..
The British-born director Zeina Durra directs the second screening of this fifth day of La Mostra. It is about Luxor, a title taken from the city of the same name located in southern Egypt, country that sponsors this tape, on the banks of the Nile River. To that place in the world surrounded by remains of the ancient empires of the pharaohs, Hana moves, a doctor who returns to the city after several years working as head of a hospital on the border between Jordan and Syria, center today of many humanitarian conflicts, as everyone will know. Hana seems to be taking a break. After checking into your hotel, goes for long walks around the area. On one of those walks he meets Sultan, an old friend and lover from his youth. Together they resume the relationship and review what they were. so far, no problem. However, as the story progresses, We will discover that in Hana's heart lies a conflict that she struggles to resolve..
Con Luxor, Zeina Durra has built a dramatic artifact that refers us to directors like Sofia Coppola or, in certain aspects, to the work of South Korean Hong Sang-soo. Like in Lost in traslation, with which this film has some thematic and formal similarities, As in much of the work of the author of Grass, Durra's characters wander languidly from one place to another, have occasional encounters with other people, friends or strangers, with those who simply talk, of their lives, from the past, of the future and, So, They are putting order to those matters that disturb them. On the way, Those doubts that plague them will come to light and that point to a life that does not seem to find its meaning in a world that, they perceive, is decomposing.
Here again we do not find a conflict to be resolved according to the forms of the most classical orthodoxy., as was the case in the case of Autumn landscapes. From the first moment, we perceive that, In Hana's attitude there is a certain rejection of the environment that surrounds her, towards their peers, of whom he seems to distrust or, at least, avoid his company, wants to be alone. In that behavior, superbly voiced by actress Andrea Riseborough (Burden, nocturnal animals) lies the mystery that, as spectators, we want to discover. For it, Durra and her characters leave us small clues that we must collect. At the moment when that internal tension that Hana seems to be holding within herself, explode, we will find the resolution of this story.
Con Luxor, Zeina Durra, more than proposing a reflection, places us before a series of sensations. One of those sensations is nostalgia.. Hana and Sultan meet again after a while without seeing each other. So, through those friendly conversations they have during their walks, They make references to situations from the past that take place several years ago., in a time of innocence and unconsciousness in the face of what a future that is, now, its inevitable present. The lost desires, the supposed achievements, the failures, the possibility of never again feeling those emotions that remind us, we believe, to the purest time of our youth. And who hasn't felt like that at some point??
But that feeling of nostalgia, hide, crouched, another feeling of uncomfortable melancholy that runs through the tape from one end to the other. An impression that points to a world in constant conflagration with itself. Hana returns to Egypt after working as a doctor in one of the most conflictive areas in the world. After that experience, she feels defeated, hopeless. Given this situation, There are two escape routes. The first towards that even more distant past that represents that already lost Egypt that he can see in the pyramids and burials that Sultan shows him.. Another is tempted to take refuge in a false mysticism full of strange ceremonies and rites that may well be a scam.. But not, the solution to your problem is not out, as Freud would say, to which the film refers directly and symbolically, but within herself.
Zeina Durra has created a delicate piece of goldsmithing. Like in Lost in traslation, the famous Cinta de Coppola, the protagonist of Luxor He is a lonely being lost in a culture that is not his. In the middle of a whirlwind of sensations, its problems point to the contemporary individual, a being that has lost its way and, in the background, to the sense of a world that does not understand and that, the energy passed, the innocence and hopes of that longed-for youth, faces a huge void. How to fill that deep hole is not an easy challenge. But, if we search, tells us Luxor, we will find a way out. G.LEON
