Tag: chile

Trauma

  By

★★★½
“Parental advisory, to put it mildly.”

This is not an easy film to watch. The easily-offended should stay away. Indeed, even the hard to offend, which include myself, may find it rough going. To give you some idea, the opening scene is set in a 1978 Chilean torture chamber where a political dissident is being interrogated. When she won’t talk, her son is drugged and forced to rape his own mother. It actually goes on to get worse still, but that’ll give you some idea. In terms of disturbing opening scenes, I can’t think of many equivalents.

Fast forward to 2011, and four young women are on their way for a quiet weekend in a country house owned by one’s uncle. An unfortunate stop for directions in a local dive-bar puts them on the radar of Juan (Antivilo) and his son, Mario (Ríos). The former was the teenage boy of the opening sequence, and was clearly broken beyond repair by those and other events. He has passed that damage on to Mario, and the pair now form a father-son duo of staggering repugnance. When they subsequently show up on the doorstep, our four heroines are in for a very, very unpleasant night. But when they learn Juan has turned his attentions to pre-pubescent local girl, Yoya, they decide something must be done, and take the fight to Juan and Mario.

It’s brutally unpleasant stuff, with some (literally) mind-blowingly gory effects. But it’s acted and assembled well enough that it can’t be written off as mere torture porn, and some radical switches in tone actually work in its favour. For example, after the opening scene, we cut to some intense lesbian canoodling, provoking cinematic cognitive dissonance which is disturbing yet effective. And importantly, it’s not without a point. In that area, it’s like A Serbian Film, which used its cinematic atrocities as a parable about the break-up of Yugoslavia. I’d actually say this was rather more successful in terms of getting its message over, about the impact of the tyrannical Allende regime of the seventies and its impact over the decades.

The carnage likely reaches its peak near the middle when everyone returns to the bar, for a fight of disturbing savagery, even by this movie’s standards, which also affirms Juan’s status as completely above the law in the local community. The final battle, I have to say, did come across as rather confused in comparison, likely hindered by lighting which barely reached the level of murky. As a result, on more than one occasion, I went “Hang on, aren’t they dead already?”Considering how coolly clinical Rojas’s camera was in capturing the previous unpleasantness, this was disappointing.

If there’s a message here, it’s the one written by Edward Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Or women, in this case, with Andrea (Martin) taking the lead. She’s an interesting character, with a certain standard of morality: for instance, she doesn’t like her sister’s girlfriend, though it’s unclear whether this is because of gender or personality. It’s Andrea who increasingly occupies centre-stage as events unfold, and occupies the film’s final frame. Though let’s just say, it’s not exactly what you would call a happy ending, even if there is some degree of catharsis to be found. It’s probably even harder to forget than to watch.

Dir: Lucio A. Rojas.
Star: Catalina Martin, Daniel Antivilo, Macarena Carrere, Felipe Ríos

Dueños del paraíso

  By

★★
“The main powder here is soap, not cocaine.”

Business is on the streets, check it out.
Survival of the strongest they’re the ones in charge
It’s at gunpoint, it’s outside the law.
Your word is your bond and you know it, man.
How many lives have been lost to loyalty?
If you’re my partner take care you can’t fail me
Honor comes before love.
The streets are fierce because they know I’m here.
We’re the masters of this dream, All American dream
I’m brave not merciful, I’m bad to the bone
By steel, tequila and blood we’ll be the masters of paradise

Based on the above theme song, and credits which are a fast-paced montage of gun-fights, explosions and chases through the Everglades, you’d be expecting a action-packed creature that will keep the adrenaline pumping. The reality? Not so much. Indeed, just about every gun-battle in the 71 episodes here could be fitted into the opening credits. Despite this being the much-touted return of del Castillo to the genre, after her success in La Reina Del Sur, she is just one in a slew of characters, and while central, is arguably not the focus.

The title of this 2015 show translates as “Masters of Paradise”, and it occupies a not dissimilar time and place to the previous year’s Viuda Negra: Miami during the infamous cocaine wars of the late seventies and early eighties. Rather than taking some inspiration from the actual character of Griselda Blanco, this Mexican-Chilean co-production invents an entire set of fictional characters. At the core is Anastasia Cardona (del Castillo), the wife of a Mexican drug lord who is forced to flee the country after war breaks out with a rival group of traffickers.

They try to set up shop in Florida instead, which brings them to the attention some of well-established local rivals, the Quezadas, led by Leandro (Varoni). While Anastasia’s husband soon bites a bullet, the twist is, it’s not the enemy who are responsible: Anastasia herself killed him, in a fit of jealousy. Not that this stops Leandro’s chief hitman from taking the credit, or from attacking the funeral, stealing the corpse and then dropping it from a helicopter into the courtyard of his house – to make some kind of point, I guess. They follow up by kidnapping Anastasia, leaving her for dead in the swamps, and when she eventually recovers, vows to take revenge.

If this was what the show was about, it would be fine. However, it’s much more about the everyday lives of her various minions and their families, in particular, Conrado San Miguel (Zabaleta) and Adán Romero (Torre), the latter of whom is just as newly arrived in Miami. These all unfold against a backdrop of Anastasia’s quest for power and revenge, but the latter feels more like an afterthought. Think of it as similar to the way Zombieland was a road movie, that just happened to unfold against a backdrop of the zombie apocalypse. So this is a soap opera, that just happens to unfold against a backdrop of drug dealing and vengeance.

So, we get things like Adán’s daughter having issues with a jealous classmate at her new school. Conrado’s wife, Erica, is an aspiring actress, who is lured in by a sleazy producer into material of a more, ah, “adult” nature. An interfering mother-in-law. Unwanted pregnancy. A sprinkling of sexual tension. It’s mostly generic stuff, blandly uninteresting and little more than background noise as far as drama goes – though I was amused by the first name-check of B-movie director Russ Meyer I’ve heard in a telenovela. Another problem was the Chilean co-production elements, which keeps diverting the film off to that South American country, almost inevitably at the worst possible moment, just when things are getting going in Florida.

Duenos del paraiso

All told, probably less than a third of this is what I’d call “the good stuff”. Much of that is down to del Castillo, who is as solid as ever, and has plenty of opportunities to deliver her trademark stare, capable of melting a hole in sheet metal. I also note the presence of Oscar-nominated actress Adriana Barraza as Anastasia’s mother, Irene Medrano, who has an entire graveyard worth of skeletons in her closet; that’s certainly a better pedigree of supporting cast than most series can boast. Other positive elements include the husband and wife “cleaners”, who have a thriving business disposing of all the dead bodies, and occasionally effective moments, such as when one character is given the news of her mother’s death, in medium-long shot, and told almost entirely in her reaction.

However, the scripting in particular seems to be remarkably sloppy. At one point, Leandro Quezada appears to be stricken with a terminal disease, but this plot-line appears to be casually discarded, almost as if it never happened. The time-frame doesn’t make a great deal of sense either: there’s a gap of seven months when Anastasia recovers from her kidnapping, during which Quezada and his clan are doing… apparently nothing, when they have a perfect opportunity to bury their enemies for good. It performs another great leap forward for the final couple of episodes as well, skipping over two years, for no clear purpose. And that ending supposedly offers a big twist, yet is incredibly obvious: while I’m usually no good at spotting these things, even I saw this one coming from a long way off.

It never quite became irritating or annoying enough for me to give serious consideration to giving up, and was, at least, relatively consistent in its tone and style throughout. My disinterest was mostly a result of the content. It feels as though the makers didn’t want to tell a story about crime and criminals, so much as bolt the elements of a traditional soap-opera onto a hot topic, seeking to exploit del Castillo’s previous work and reputation, rather than capitalizing and building on it. Definitely a disappointment.

Creator: Pablo Illanes
Star: Kate del Castillo, Miguel Varoni, Jorge Zabaleta, José María Torre

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Bring me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman

  By

★★★½
“Sam Peckinpah would likely approve – as long as he has a console in the afterlife.”

machineWhen not spinning platters as the DJ at a tango club in Chile, Santiago Fernández (Oviedo) likes nothing better than to kill, rob and steal – at least, from the comfort of his couch, as he plays a game just dissimilar enough to Grand Theft Auto to avoid a lawsuit. There is, of course, a huge difference between video-game malfeasance and the real thing, as he discovers after being unfortunate enough to overhear a conversation of local crime boss Che Longana (Alis), in which he makes the titular request, said skull belonging to his ex-girlfriend (Urrejola), who is also an assassin of no mean talent. Caught eavesdropping, Santiago’s escapes execution by promising to deliver her to Longana – a task for which he is woefully unprepared, despite the countless hours of console practice for a life of crime.

While containing nods to the grindhouse era, the style is very much more GTA, with villains being introduced by a still, on which is overlaid their value, and Santiago’s car, as he drives around town, being filmed from behind and slightly above, the standard angle for the genre. Progress is even broken down into a number of missions, whose success or failure is documented by a large on-screen graphic. Yes, it’s undeniably gimmicky; however, at a brisk 73 minutes, including credits, it’s a gimmick which just about manages to avoid overstaying its welcome. My main problem is instead a strong preference for the Machine Gun Woman – she’s never named anything else – over Santiago, because she is exactly the sort of creation, in attitude as much as dress-sense, who would be perfectly at home in a video-game. Brutal and manipulative, she’s simply more interesting than the snivelling hero, who sole redeeming feature appears to be that he loves his Mom.

By the end of the film, he’s the one charging in, with all guns blazing to rescue her – albeit, after he has forgotten to mention a tiny detail on their initial assault against the Boss Level. Still, considering the film’s events unfold in barely a day, it’s a remarkable transformation, even by video-game standards; not least in his ability to hit the broad side of a barn, something notable by its absence early on. That said, it’s still an entertaining and briskly-told tale: Espinoza is very much aware that the “cut scenes” are likely to be of lesser interest to his audience, and whizzes through them to get to the next spurt of action. The results are clearly not intended to be taken too seriously, and shouldn’t tax the attention span of even the most ardent gamer.

Dir: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Star: Matías Oviedo, Fernanda Urrejola, Jorge Alis, Francisca Castillo