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| Historias Minimas | | (And The Dark Cultural Vocabulary Of Latin Movies) | | 01 April 2005 | | FairgroundTown has watched a lot of Spanish/ Mexican movies recently, thanks to the fantastic new DVD rental service at www.amazon.co.uk and we're starting to understand that the differences with Anglo-American films run much deeper than language.
It's all about what we'll call (for want of a better term) cultural vocabulary - the way a movie thinks and acts - the strings it pulls and the responses it expects. It is partly a question of style - lighting, makeup and camera angles, although we suspect some of the differences here are caused by budgetry constraints as much as anything else, as was the case with the distinctive hue of Julio Medem's 'Lucia y el Sexo' (www.imdb.com) which emanated from the use of cheap(ish) digital cameras and on-location sets.
More than style, though, it is about structure - particularly endings, and it is here that the differences really begin to tell. Latin cinema relishes darkness, or at least ambiguity, in its conclusions - the death of Ana at the end of 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' (www.imdb.com); the rape of Alicia in the final act of 'Hable con Ella' (www.imdb.com).
The significance of this was, oddly enough, only driven home to us by a film that failed to comply with these expectations - Carlos Sorin's 'Historias Minimas' (www.imdb.com) the tranquil (minimal!) story of an old, infirm shopkeeper who embarks upon a quest to reunite with the pet dog who has walked out on him some years before. As the film progressed, in its quiet, gentle way, we steeled ourselves for the tragedy that seemed its inevitable outcome, but it never came, and the final positivity of the ending was a shock all of its own. |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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2010