Original title: Nelyubov · Andrey Zvyagintsev · Russia · 2017 · Script: Andrey Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin · Intérpretes: Marya Spivak, Aleksey Rozin, Matvey Novikov…
Original title: Call me by your name · Luca Guadagnino · Russia · 2017 · Script: James Ivory · Performers: Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg…
There is in the latest production of the Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, Loveless, a scene that comes to fruition, in a subtle way, but forceful, the intentions that seem to have encouraged you to tackle this project. It happens in a luxury restaurant. While two of the protagonists of this story enjoy an intimate dinner, on another table, a group of women are also celebrating. When the camera approaches the table of that group of friends, They get up from their chairs and group together to make a selfie, while they encourage each other by toasting their glasses in the name of love. But, what love do they refer to? Does love exist, really?, We ask ourselves when witnessing this scene.
Loveless tells the story of Zhenia and Boris, a couple who are in the middle of a gruesome divorce process. Of the ancient passion that may have existed between them once, there is nothing left, and the only thing they still seem to have in common is the apartment they live in and that they are trying to sell. Zhenia and Boris feel a real and radical contempt for each other. But, although they do not seem to be aware, apart from housing, something more still unites both of them: su hijo He washed, a twelve year old boy who watches all this with real anguish. But perhaps what hurts Alyosha's young soul the most is the realization that, for their parents, It is nothing more than another object, a hindrance that both want to get rid of, a nuisance, a stumbling block that hinders your future. Ignored by both parents, one day Alyosha disappears. Thus begins a search that will unceremoniously expose the miseries of this world without love..
The first thing that stands out is that Andrey Zvyagintsev has built a limpid and seamless story in his latest work.. What there is is what you see, and there is no need to make elaborate interpretations or search for hidden meanings to understand what it wants to tell us.. Zvyagintsev does not need convoluted structures to seduce the viewer either.. Quite the opposite, his story advances in a straight line, from the presentation of events to their final resolution. But the most relevant thing of all is that this precise construction of the script, of which he is co-author, fails to constrict the development of a story that unfolds all its folds freely before the viewer, without anchors, with a truly remarkable spontaneity. Result of this balance between scrupulous precision, clarity and simplicity, We find a cast of characters that are pure humanity, not only because the Russian director manages to immerse us in its social contexts in a very realistic and credible way., but in the exhibition of its most intimate contradictions.
That same cleanliness of approaches is transferred to the capture of this story in images. Zvyagintsev does not need emphatic underlining and the use of resources such as music or photography are exceptionally discreet here.. Even when the author of films like the very justly celebrated Leviathan surrenders to the pleasure of metaphor and symbolism, These are perfectly integrated into the narrative and, without interrupting it, They are felt with all their force in the spirit of a spectator who has no choice but to surrender to the power of what is told.. Thus, Loveless, starts with some bucolic winter images (as it also happened, by the way, in the recent In body and soul de la Hungarian Ildikó Enyedi). Almost immediately, we jump to another season of the year. When, at the end of the tape, let's recover that landscape, nothing will be the same. It's the winter of love.
Andrey Zvyagintsev holds a mirror up to us and shows us what we are like through a raw story, no hot cloths. There will undoubtedly be those who rebel and feel the temptation to deny the greater, but even the most optimistic will deeply perceive the solidity of this truth that exposes us. Zvyagintsev's film is presented to the viewer as an antidote to the temptation to fall into any cheap dogmatism.. There is no, in Loveless, neither good nor bad. Everyone is guilty. There are victims, Of course, to whose suffering we cannot help but adhere (and there we will find our way to the necessary and perhaps hypocritical redemption). We could even dare to maintain that those responsible for this disaster are also ultimate victims.. But, victims of what? of themselves, of course. And there we return to that image that we mentioned at the beginning, to that culture of the “I” that is so well exposed and in which there is no room for anything other than individual ambitions and desires. During the screening, we come to mind the tape of the French Joachim Lafosse, after us, also focused on a separation process very similar to the one we witness here. But where Lafosse left a door open to the possibility of understanding and understanding, Andrey Zvyagintsev leaves no room for it. for the russian, contemporary society is sick from this lack of love.
In what is undoubtedly his most solid and forceful work, Carol, adaptation to the big screen of the novel by the writer Patricia Highsmith, American director Todd Haynes told us about the relationship between two women, Carol y Therese, superbly played by actresses Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. But Carol, The movie, It was more than a love story: It is the narration of the culmination of a moment, of a wish. If we talk about cinematographic experience, Haynes's film not only seduced us for its elegant way of exposing the ins and outs of a relationship that confronted the conventions of an era., but to the mastery with which he led us through the emotions to which his characters were exposed and which he expressed with elegant restraint., intelligently hiding the arrival of that glorious moment in which physical longing was consummated. Definitely, a masterpiece. Well then, I think it is worth taking Haynes' film into account when facing the latest work by Italian director Luca Guadagnino, Call me by your name.
With a script by also director James Ivory (whose mark is felt throughout the film), Call me by your name takes us to the year 1983, to a beautiful villa located in northern Italy where young Elio spends his holidays with his family, while he spends time with his friends, his readings and music (despite his age, He is a virtuoso pianist). But Elio's peaceful life is intensely disrupted with the appearance on the scene of the handsome Oliver., a university professor, friend of his parents, that he will spend a few days with them to work on a book he has in hand, while sharing succulent picnic meals with the family and enjoying the landscape that surrounds you. As in Haynes' story, We soon sense that something more than a friendship will be forged between the adolescent Elio and the more mature Olivier..
When analyzing a film like Call me by your name It must be taken into account that we are faced with one of those products whose acceptance will depend, to a large extent, the state of mind with which each viewer receives what the screen shows them. for some, Luca Guadagnino's film will be presented as a delicate aesthetic exercise that frames a no less delicate love story. For others, among whom I am, we are faced with an exercise in subtle imposture.
They are imposture, in my humble opinion, the characters that populate this little drama. And what do we have here? Well, what there is is a series of characters that live in a kind of limbo, the one that seems to provide them with their status, their professions and their training. All the characters are well behaved (Elio and Oliver's father belong to the academic world) which places them in a very specific intellectual space. A place that allows the debate and the situations raised to be brought to that level that is so interesting to the plot., but what, in this case, are perceived as a cliché. And the same thing happens with the spaces where the story takes place.. An equally idealized Italy, of sunny days, of villas among orchards full of delicious fruits (reason for one of the crudest metaphors in the film), of cobblestone towns and friendly and welcoming people. And it is not so much about taking away from those responsible for this project the right to frame it wherever they want., but to draw attention to the fact that here all of this is reduced to a mere archetype that ends up weighing down the story that, in this way, loses that necessary intimacy that undoubtedly required.
That same imposture that weighs down characters and spaces is also transferred to the execution of the script in images.. Luca Guadagnino recreates himself, above all, in exposing those elements that we talked about before, but there is nothing in it to hold on to from an emotional point of view. The person responsible for films like blinded by the sun has on its hands a conflict very similar to the one Haynes addressed in Carol, the love relationship between two men in a society that does not seem to accept it, the search for that climactic moment in which emotions explode, to expose that feeling of primal and pure infatuation. But Guadagnino does not find the right tone and instead of focusing his attention on the development of those feelings and emotions, He wanders around them without knowing how to approach them.. And therein lies the main difference between the two films.. While Haynes was preparing us for that final moment, Guadagnino does nothing but delay it with no other intention than to delight in that landscape, with the frame.
Little help in this case, besides, somewhat overacted interpretations with which Guadagnino fails to compensate for what he has not been able to sow. And with this statement, We do not want to throw away the efforts of a cast that gives its best. It's not a question of acting talent, It's a focus problem., of structure. So, what in Haynes was pure emotion, here it is artifice, simulacrum, and we fail to empathize with the supposed feelings they try to convey to us.. There is a difference between immersing ourselves in conflicts, like haynes, and attend to its mere description, What does the Italian director do?. The result of all this is that, when the big moment comes, we are aesthetically and emotionally exhausted and we witness it with frank indifference. GERARDO LEON
