MEXICAN CINEMA—Backyard (El Traspatio, 2009)

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth. Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice to be heard. This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't ... and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."—Esther Chavez.

As detailed in the press book for Carlos Carerra's most recent feature Backyard (El Traspatio), the film's narrative is based on actual events that took place in 1996 in Ciudad Juárez: a Mexican border city sustained by American-owned factories, or maquiladoras, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. "1996 was the year when people on both sides of the border began to grow accustomed to the fact that every month or every week in Juárez, a young woman would turn up dead. The screenplay was written in the year 2001 as the murders continued: three or four bodies appeared like clockwork every month, while the author [Sabina Berman] was writing her screenplay in the local Holiday Inn. Backyard was filmed on location in 2008, when each week murdered women continued to appear—in keeping with what is now a local Juárez custom."

As Diana Sanchez specified in her program capsule for the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (where Backyard saw its international premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar): "This ongoing tragedy remains a painful stain on Mexican history and has been the subject of numerous films, articles and books", including the 2006 Jennifer Lopez vehicle Bordertown and Lourdes Portillo's 2001 documentary Señorita extraviada (Missing Young Woman), in which Portillo sought to give voice to the many victims and to understand how these awful crimes could take place. In her onstage interview with Variety critic John Anderson at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, Portillo detailed the death threats she received after making Señorita extraviada and the debilitating effect it had on her.

Similar threats were levied at the cast and crew of Backyard, as outlined in Guy Adam's report to The Independent: "Last year, the makers of … El Traspatio (The Backyard) reported that an actress from Ciudad Juárez, where they were shooting, had found a slaughtered lamb on her doorstep, with a death threat pinned to it. She was replaced, for her own safety. Several other crew members on the film, about local drug murders, reported receiving sinister anonymous phone calls." Carrera's crew shot their film surrounded by two bands of armed men. One of these rings was formed by agents from the government Division of Investigation Specializing in Organized Crime (SIEDO), the other by soldiers with rifles. Two police commanders assigned to security duty were slain and a third had to flee in fear of her life. Although the governments of Juárez and Mexico ultimately decided to provide protection to Carrera and his film crew, they first tried to dissuade Carrera from the project, hoping he would instead shoot a romantic comedy in Cancun; but, Carrera and Berman remained committed to the subject of femicide in Juárez. As reported by Tracy Wilkinson to the Los Angeles Times, "Local government officials do not come off well in the film, having often preferred to downplay the murders of easily replaced female factory workers in order to prop up business interests."

Perhaps best known for El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Carlos Carrera is expected to attend Backyard's screening at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), where it has been included in PSIFF's Modern Masters sidebar. Backyard is likewise Mexico's entry this year in the Academy Awards® foreign-language film category.

As Diana Sanchez has written: "Presented as a fiction, Carrera's film is all the more moving given that the events he recounts are based on true stories and touch upon the various theories that have been put forward as to the cause of the murders. Hypotheses range from a serial killer, to drug cartels, to the more abstract pains of globalization, and it is easy to see how any of these factors could be at work in this Mexican town, which is a backyard to El Paso, Texas. Through his film, Carrera is able to denounce culprits who have never been brought to justice. However, the most devastating truth he illuminates is that these murders continue to happen because they have become commonplace. Today, some men kill women in Ciudad Juárez simply because they can."

The topic of femicide is unquestionably important and Backyard aims its statistics of sex-related murders from other Mexican cities and other South American countries with stern verve, pointedly wrapping up with sobering statistics from New York City where 3,200 murders of women remain unsolved. A worldwide issue, femicide is clearly not exclusive to Juárez; yet—though conceding the necessity of keeping the issue in public focus to counter its statistical frequency—I have mixed feelings about Backyard. Though it has high production values, with a strong turn by Ana de la Reguera in the lead role of Police Captain Blanca Bravo, I have substantive concerns with Berman's script which—though it informs through dramatization—offers questionable solutions, primarily through a revenge scenario towards film's end that has been both applauded and deplored by audiences. Though Berman has defended her scriptural choice as morally unambiguous, it remains excessively dramatic and—oddly enough—counterproductive. As Marilyn Ferdinand opines at Ferdy on Films, the dramatic violence of the subject scene provides the audience cathartic relief from their frustration but possibly sends them home "without really taking the message of the film to heart." In this instance, cathartic release falls far short of viable solutions. It's too easy to kill the killer and be done with it. Not to say that Berman should pretend she has solutions, but at the same time she shouldn't really defuse their absence through compounded violence. Acknowledging that the wall of indifference and denial in Mexican society is a horrible problem, there's a defeatist edge to Berman's vision: "We can't solve it," she said to the L.A. Times, "let's change the subject." I'm not criticizing her defeatism. I think it's a healthy and honest response. I'm not so sure, however, about her dramatized solutions which offer false remedy.

Ferdinand does a solid job of synopsizing Berman's narrative and endorsing the "important message of this grave film", even as she stages a cogent complaint that despite Carrera's disclaimer that Backyard is not intended as "entertainment" certain "touches—particularly the attractive lady detective in the Law & Order mold—are right out of the Hollywood play book." Ferdinand's concern that reviews that read and critique Backyard as a thriller "underplay or ignore its message—a rather chilling commentary on how even the most hideous violence against women has so completely infiltrated the entertainment industry." Again, no solutions appear ready to present themselves. For now, a sober eye on the information is in order.

Cross-published on Twitch.

ARGENTINE CINEMA: LOS SANTOS SUCIOS / THE DIRTY SAINTS (2009)—Q&A With Luis Ortega

Speaking with Diana Sanchez at the start of this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she advised that one of her criteria for choosing Latino films for TIFF is to determine the films that most characterize the cinematic landscape of any given country's national cinema for the current calendar year. From Argentina she brought two widely divergent examples: a polished big budget police procedural love story El Secreto de Sus Ojos / Secret of the Eyes (Argentina's submission to the Academy Awards®) and a raw, independent film Los Santos Sucios / The Dirty Saints, indicative of the evolving vision of one of Argentina's young auteurs, Luis Ortega, of whom she's written: "With only two feature films under his belt, Luis Ortega is already considered one of Argentina's more impressive and original directorial voices. His first feature, Black Box, stood apart from the social critiques that characterized the films of his Argentine contemporaries."

Luis Ortega was born in Buenos Aires and attended film school at the Universidad del Cine. At the age of 19, he wrote the screenplay for his feature directorial debut, Caja Negra / Black Box (2002), which received several festival accolades: including the SIGNIS Award and Special Jury Prize at the Mar de Plata Film Festival; the Don Quixote Award along with two others at the Fribourg International Film Festival; and was nominated for the Argentine Film Critics Association's Silver Condor for Best First Film. His second feature, Monobloc (2005) won the Horizons Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival and a Special Mention at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. His latest film Los Santos Sucios / The Dirty Saints (2009) boasted its World Premiere in the Vanguard Program at this year's TIFF.

I admired Ortega's wild and seemingly wounded persona as he addressed his audience, nervously combing an unruly mane with his hand while baring his soul to scrutiny; never a comfortable proposition. Equally, I was pleased when he and Rodrigo Vélez—the lead actor in Colombia's El vuelco del cangrejo / Crab Trap (2009)—embraced like brothers after the screening, proud of each others' accomplishments. Their mutual encouragement was palpable and fundamentally sweet to observe.

On Who Are the Dirty Saints?

This movie started out with these people I knew—these friends of mine—who were living on the street. I met them 10 years ago and I started writing the story for them. Eventually, when we began filming the movie last year, they all started passing away. The movie was supposed to be with non-actors but they just didn't make it. The final thing that happened was that the last one who was alive flipped out. He lived on the street and drank a lot and the week before shooting he went completely crazy. Thus, I had to act in the film myself and that wasn't part of the plan. None of the real people who the story was based on are alive anymore, except the one who went crazy. Now there are professional actors in the film, like Rey (Alejandro Urdapilleta), Monito (Martina Juncadella) and the kid, though he's more of a circus-kind of actor. The other guys are not actors at all.

Los Santos Sucios is inspired by the lives of these street people who were able to transcend the daily difficulties of life with a great sense of humor. I had my home and all the standard things and yet I couldn't enjoy life as much as them. That's why that place where they get to in the end, that's where they would really get: standing in a corner, maybe not even going to the bathroom, with their pants all dirty in a terrible terrible state; but, they would smile, more than normal people. I had to put that out there. So I imagined this place where there's nothing, which is definitely better than something when everything is already rotten and experience runs out. There's nothing left to do. You don't know where to run. It's a spiritual exile. It's like getting out of this world without having to die.

On What the Character of Monito Represents

Monito is love or the idea of love. As a word, love is trouble. We all know that. Love wouldn't have made the trip [across the Fijman River] possible. I did film her traveling with them and included her in the sequence where they are each facing the wind; but, the idea was always that she would stay behind. [Sanchez describes Monito as "a creature desperate for love and affection, not yet ready to leave humanity behind for an unknown future."]

Though I'm against reproduction, I don't expect audiences to think that way; but, by her staying behind, some new race could start over, some new people. She stays behind and finds the map and a book. The idea was to leave something pure, to leave a little bit of hope behind, even though this movie is not about hope; it's just about will—they just have to cross the river—they don't want to live and they don't want to die. They just want out.

On the Liebig Corned Beef Advertisement

That looks like a smart joke; but, that really exists. That's like a little monument in this little town where we shot this film. There's this big factory there where they used to make that corned beef. I got to that town and I saw that sign and it was like a Warhol thing. It was too pop for what should be in the film; but, I couldn't avoid it. It was there. I had to do it. It's still there.

On the Symbolic Significance of the Door Handle

Everything comes out of something that you're living and going through. I used to live in a house that had no light, no water. It was just a house. I used to live there with a guy that didn't speak. We didn't have a door with a key, we just had the doorknob. When we left the house, we would leave with the doorknob. That's how I started thinking about it. But then it's supposed to be the door or the key to somewhere; but—since they're going nowhere—it's okay that it gets dropped along the way. They don't need it. Los Santos Sucios is like Waiting for Godot, only more like Going Towards Godot. Even if we don't know who Godot is, where he is, if he is, if he's God, whatever. Eventually, the idea is that you don't need anything at all to reach that place. I'm not Zen-like. I'm just a really anxious person. I can't stand watching this movie; it's too slow. But it's still the movie that I wanted to do.

On Using Sound Design

to Represent Interior States

Film tries to copy reality; but, that's not how life sounds when you're alone. When you're alone, you hear all sorts of creepy things. If some of you are a little paranoid, maybe you know what I'm talking about. That sensibility where you're on the edge all the time because reality is so hallucinatory. The sky: I get up every day and I just can't get used to it. I get up and I go, "Whoa, shit." I have to assimilate what things are every day. That's why I wanted this world to look as strange as I see it. Not as we've all agreed it is so that we understand left is left and right is right. That's just an agreement not to bump into each other. But there are different laws of nature and it's really much more crazy than what civilization is holding down.

On Tarkovsky As Influence and Inspiration

For those who know Andrei Tarkovsky, he's like Jesus for me. I was influenced by his idea of putting your soul in the scenery. This was a low budget film. Thank God we had these smoke machines and all we needed was the wind to blow the smoke the right way. And it happened. Sometimes it doesn't happen. I'm influenced by the idea that the space and light have to tell you how you're feeling, not just the actors. Tarkovsky is the main influence on this movie. [Diana Sanchez referenced the same in her program capsule wherein she wrote: "Ortega's approach is anarchic and unexpected. Incorporating influences from Tarkovsky's Stalker, the film likewise transcends science fiction, working as a commentary on humankind's deepest anxieties and questions about our very existence. Ultimately, though, The Dirty Saints is a film about spiritual and physical exodus. Our five travelers decide to cross to the other side of the river, preferring to discover the unknown rather than wait on Earth, in a Godot-like stasis, for nothing to happen and no one to arrive."]

At first I wanted to do a remake of Stalker. But I didn't have the talent or the money or the time, even though that was what I wanted to talk about. No one watches Tarkovsky's movies anymore. They just go onto YouTube to watch the scene where the guy puts himself on fire. But when you see that scene in Tarkovsky's movie, by the time the character gets to that point, it's just a big trip. I'm talking about nostalgia. The difference is that Tarkovsky was a person with a lot of faith and I'm not. I share the feelings with him but I just don't have the hope. I'm pretty much hopeless; but, I'm full of joy.

When we were walking in that final scene over the desert, we were really hot, and we were joking, "What do you think's on the other side? A shopping mall? A golf course?" The movie's a little romantic in topic—and that's how I loved it to be—but, unfortunately, we can't travel together. It's a lonely journey. This is as close as we can get. We have someone to love, to make love to, and that's the end of the solitude for a while. Eventually, the trip is so lonely that it's better to start enjoying it somehow. That's what this film is about.

These people are completely exhausted. But at the end those birds appear like a little celebration. That wasn't planned. We just walked into the bird zone. Most times films just end how they're supposed to end. I was bitching at the birds because I didn't want anything to appear in the final frame. I was bitching at them, thinking I would have to go and digitally erase them. But so many flew in that I finally just had to give in to it. That's the third element that we don't control. That's the wonderful thing about making films. That's why I wanted to leave everything. Like just walking down the street and accepting everything.

On Whether Film Is An Alienating Medium

Film is like a virus. If a virus kills you, it's tragic; but, if you kill the virus, it's tragic for the virus. It could be alienating. It's hard for me to talk about that. I can talk about it now because you've seen the movie and something is broken. Alienation is just a way of protection. Society is alienating because—if it weren't—there would be more people that would be free and celebrating a different sky every day. But it's Monday and we each have to go to work.

I'd rather have a poetic alienation than a civilized one, which is like a militarized scene, a box for the soul with not much chance for surprise. So even if it's scary, I'd rather just see everything, forget what the name is, just see it, and let that happen to me. You could go crazy. That's why my friends didn't make it into the film. They eventually went crazy. That's a consequence of repression. When we actually find freedom, it creates a kind of madness.

Maybe poetry is the end of alienation, even if it's the beginning of silence. Maybe the beginning of silence is the way to stop feeling lonely. Maybe it's the opposite. I wanted to create a unique, alienating world and share the voyage. This is all I can do for people. I love people. And I try to do it the best I can. It's my tribute to humanity. Even if it seems tragic for me, really it's just a celebration. We don't have to have a reason.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES / EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS—The Evening Class Interview With Juan José Campanella

Yesterday's announcement that Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes / El Secreto de sus ojos (2009) has been chosen as Argentina's Oscar® submission for the 82nd Academy Awards® toggled me to transcribe my conversation with director Campanella from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, where The Secret in Their Eyes received critical acclaim and sold-out audiences to its international premiere, following suit with a similar response at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Trade reviews on the film have been strong. At Variety, Jonathan Holland hailed the film as "mesmerizing"; at The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young called it "riveting"; at Screen International, Mike Goodridge cited that the film "packs an emotional punch"; and Twitch teammate Todd Brown characterized Campanella's direction as "remarkably steady and assured."

The Secret in Their Eyes is also making history in Argentina, as the number one box office hit film for the past five weeks. Audiences have been raving and discussing the film in the media and in cafés and restaurants throughout Argentina.

Campanella—who was previously nominated for an Oscar® in 2001 for his film Son of the Bride—responded to the news: "I am very proud of my film, and the response it is getting from audiences around the world and in Argentina is tremendous. I am excited to represent Argentina in this year's Oscar® competition." Campanella works in both Argentina and the United States. In the U.S., he continues to be a favorite director amongst TV shows including House, MD, Law and Order: SVU, and 30 Rock.

The Secret in Their Eyes concerns Benjamín Espósito, a secretary of a court in Buenos Aires, who is about to retire. He decides to write a novel based on a case that deeply affected him 30 years past. Espósito's tale crosses Argentina's turbulent years during the 1970s, when nothing was necessarily what it seemed to be. As Diana Sanchez writes in her TIFF program capsule: "Campanella's tightly paced feature pairs smart dialogue with powerful, moving performances. Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil, two of Argentina's best actors, bring an electric sense of unspoken longing to their scenes together, an intimacy of mutual suppression."

Campanella and I tucked away into the bar at Sutton Place to discuss his film where—above the frenetic din—he held me captivated with his enthusiasm and affable sense of humor. My thanks to David Magdael for arranging same. [This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!!]

* * *

Michael Guillén: Juan José, the script to El Secreto de sus ojos is attractive for being complex. Can you speak to its structure? Did you write the script? Was it based on a novel?

Juan José Campanella: It's based on a novel La Pregunta and I co-wrote the script with the novelist Eduardo Sacheri.

Guillén: I presume the novel was popular in Argentina?

Campanella: In terms of popularity, Sacheri is a popular writer of short stories. This was his first novel and I don't think it did as well as his short stories, though of course now it is selling more than it sold in the last four years.

Guillén: My understanding is that an image in the novel of an old man eating by himself provoked your adapting it into a film?

Campanella: No, that's not completely true. I'm a fan of Sacheri's so—when I was reading the novel—I wasn't reading it with the idea of making a movie. The novel started with a writer starting a novel in several ways—which we kept in the movie—and I thought, "Wow. It's more cinematic than I thought it was going to be." But then I got lost in the story and I really liked it. For a while I fiddled with the idea of making the novel into a movie. I worked with Fernando Castets, my writing partner for my previous movies, including Son of the Bride (2001); but, we abandoned it. As a filmmaker, I couldn't find what resonated with me so we dropped it. But for a year, that image of the old man having dinner by himself—an image that didn't end up in the movie, by the way—made me sad.

For some reason when women become widows, they start living. In restaurants all over the world you always see four old ladies having the time of their lives, chattering and laughing. That doesn't seem to happen with guys. When guys are alone in their old age, they become sad for some reason. That image kept coming back to me and the fact that it could trigger a police story, a thriller, with a great mix of genre and humanity, a human drama. The novel also gave a strong personal motivation rather than just finding the criminal. The story was not just about a detective trying to solve a case; he's trying to solve his life, which is what I liked the most about the novel.

The main change from the novel was to make the character of Irene (Soledad Villamil) bigger. In the novel she's just a sort of Dulcinea. She's a woman who's worked at the court all of these years that Espósito (Ricardo Darín) has been in love with; but, she has no involvement in this case from the past, none whatsoever. She's just an image he sees all through these years. When I thought of bringing her story forward and making it as strong as the procedural aspect of the story, that's when it clicked in me. It took over a year for that to happen.

Guillén: So when you decided to serve this story—as you phrased it—"like a piece of meat on a plate of genre", and approached the novelist, was he willing to work with you?

Campanella: I had told him, "I would love to work with you." He had worked in the justice system in that building for many years and knew the legal language well. Also, I wanted the experience of working with another writer; but I told him, "You have to pretend that this is a game. We're going to toy around and deconstruct and make a different version out of your novel." It's as if I were working with Shakespeare and making Hamlet in space with Chinese actors. I told him, "If you have fun with that, then it will be great. If you start defending every word from the novel, then it's not going to work out."

Guillén: It's wonderful that Sacheri was willing to cooperate with you.

Campanella: Totally! But believe me, at some points I had to stop him.

Guillén: I imagine one of the reasons the story spoke to me is because I am retired from the judiciary where I worked for an Associate Justice. I grew tired of the judiciary for many of the selfsame reasons Espósito grew tired: bureaucratic delays, internal corruption, and court politics. My editor at Twitch commented that there are three narratives going on at once in your film—a crime thriller, a political editorial reflecting Argentina's past, and a love story—but, truthfully, I felt the real story was the love story.

Campanella: I think so. It starts and ends with that.

Guillén: It starts and ends many times. [Laughter.] Can you speak to that provocative narrative device? I'll be honest with you, when I caught the film at its press screening, it came towards what we thought was the end of the film, it faded to black, and we started to get up to leave when suddenly the next scene came on. So we sat back down, the scene unfolded to what we thought was the end, it faded to black and we got up to leave and, once again, the next scene started. This happened about five times!

Campanella: That physical confusion only happens at press screenings in a film festival because critics are already anticipating when they're going to leave to get to their next screening, so they're often leaving five minutes before the film is finished—it's maddening!—but, I can explain.

Guillén: Please do.

Campanella: Returning to the structure of the film, there are two strong themes. I was very much into Beethoven at the time three years ago. By chance, just before we started shooting the film, I had started listening to one of those audio courses offered through The Teaching Company about Beethoven's sonatas. I started thinking, "Wow, these sonatas are like the perfect structure for a script." This solid structure of the sonata played perfectly with two themes: the tonic and the dominant with the modulating bridges. In going from one story to another, I tried to make sure that we wouldn't be changing tempo and theme at the same time. When we switched from one narrative to another, we were still in the same energy. We would only change the energy within one theme. We had to find all these bridges to modulate from one narrative to the other easily, to flow in and out of all the themes: starting with theme one, theme two, then back again to theme one, theme two, and then the development of the coda; the end where everything gets mixed up. We worked with that sonata structure in mind. I became obsessed. All I could hear for a year was Beethoven sonatas, just to incorporate them into the film instinctively. This script in particular is patterned on Beethoven's piano sonata no. 14, the "Moonlight" sonata. As one theme would start to end, the other would start one bar before so that you never felt a fall. For me, the end of the movie, the end of the dramatic piece, is the scene with the cage.

Guillén: Interesting. When I was speaking to my editor about this, he felt the scene with the cage was the film's true ending and I agreed to a certain extent, except at the same time I understood the next scenes: the visit to the graveyard and the eventual commitment of Irene and Espósito to each other.

Campanella: To continue speaking musically, it's returning to the home key. That's the love story, which is the one that starts Espósito's fate. But that scene is more of an epilogue. The dramatic climax is the scene with the cage. I had two challenges there. In order for the scene with the cage to be surprising, for it to totally work, it had to be based on Morales (Pablo Rago) and his stated assertion that he did not believe in the death penalty. When he tells Espósito the story about how he killed Gómez (Javier Godino) in the trunk of the car, that had to play as the climax of the movie. If it wasn't played as the climax with the swelling music and the whole thing, then as an audience you would have an inner feeling that something was missing, like there's one more beat, and you're going to start looking for that beat. So that scene has to play like it's the end of the movie. A lousy end, a very obvious end, but I don't mind if for a second you think that it's a bad ending; it has to feel like the ending. So that comes at the price of already having one ending that is not the real ending, you know? But I feel that was an appropriate price to pay for the surprise of the dramatic ending of the scene with the cage.

Guillén: That false ending of Morales confessing to Espósito that he had killed Gómez did strike me as formulaic; but, I didn't buy it really because of that one moment when Morales drew the curtains. You gave us that cue. I knew he was hiding something and what he was hiding had not yet been revealed.

Campanella: Ah, you picked that out?

Guillén: Yes. I took your hint that there was something still hidden despite Morales' confession.

Campanella: Many people suspect that Morales killed his own wife.

Guillén: That suspicion also crossed my mind. Did you intend that?

Campanella: Through a lot of the movie, yes. We had to have another suspect. I mean what kind of a thriller would it be without more than one suspect?

Guillén: I recall a specific montage where you implicate Morales in his wife's murder and cast suspicion upon him; but, it didn't stick with me because—as Espósito explained to Irene—Morales' eyes revealed just how much he loved his wife.

Campanella: It was one of the toughest parts of the movie. Not the toughest part to act but the toughest part to make the right acting choices. Because Morales is a guy where two contradictory personalities co-exist: one is a guy who is passionate enough about the wife he's lost that he's stuck for his entire life in the memory of her and the memory of their broken love. But at the same time he's a guy who's so cold and methodical that he can—step by step, without telling anyone—prepare the cage to imprison Gómez and keep him there, visiting him twice a day without speaking to him. He's a hot personality and a cold personality at the same time. Our choices—I don't know if they were the right ones or not—were to make Morales contained in his emotions when he first hears about the death of his wife. Because he didn't break down and start crying, some people suspect him of the murder.

We actually didn't intend that in the first draft; but, I have six or seven people I trust to read my draft scripts, and a few of them said, "You know, I thought the murderer was Morales." That was a great help because I needed another suspect. I needed more options. C'mon, we all love thrillers and we like to try to figure them out with the protagonists in the film. The more options, the more that can happen, the better. So from the second draft on we played in a subtle way with the idea that Morales could be the murderer, even though when you see the movie it's apparent he's not.

Guillén: I think a thriller works best on a first viewing. Later, when you've pieced together all the clues, a thriller can be appreciated for its mechanics, for all its questions and red herrings.

Campanella: But, at the same time, I didn't want to end everything with question marks, even though I wanted to leave it to the audience to decide whether Espósito tells on Morales or not. That's actually what audiences in Argentina are going crazy about. They argue, "Is Campanella supporting vigilante justice?" I knew that was an answer I didn't want to provide in the movie; but, I wanted to provide at least one answer and I wanted to end the last story, the love story, and come back to the home key.

When we started writing the script, I knew we couldn't go from the scene with the cage—which, hopefully, if it worked, would be a strong dramatic scene—to the next scene where Espósito professes his love to Irene. I needed a little bit of time for the audience to make the transition and that's when we came up with the idea of Espósito taking flowers to the grave of his friend Sandoval (Guillermo Francella). It was related to the case because Sandoval was killed during the case; but, it was also related to the love story. Sandoval is associated with both stories. That scene served as a bridge and perhaps also contributed to the feeling of yet another ending. I can understand the criticism that the film has too many endings, but it was the best of the possibilities I had to work with.

Guillén: I admire the quality of the meta-narrative in this film, as if the story was being written and the film was being shot through Espósito's memory. As if memory was questioning itself and trying to get the story right through multiple drafts. That was especially pronounced in the scene where Irene has read Espósito's manuscript, which ends with the parting scene at the train station, and complains that—if that was really what happened—why didn't Espósito do anything about it? Why did he leave her behind? With a certain amount of vested resentment, she criticized, "This is a lousy ending." That's why the film's final love scene feels so satisfying because he actually does something about their love for each other, even if "it will be complicated." You got the sense it was going to finally work between them.

Campanella: [Laughs.] Yes.

Guillén: As the film's title suggests, this is definitely a movie about eyes, about clues in the eyes. The rhyme between the group photograph that reveals Gómez staring at his future victim, and the group photograph that reveals Espósito staring longingly at Irene, is an exquisite rhyme. Was that in the novel?

Campanella: No. The group photo of Gómez looking at his future victim is in the novel but I came up with the other one.

Guillén: A deft stroke! It made me concentrate on the faces of your actors and, of course, their eyes. All of your actors have amazing eyes. Which leads me to ask, once you developed the script and went to cast the film, can you speak to how you found the eyes you needed to reflect the titular secrets of your story?

Campanella: Luckily, I have known all of these actors from other films where we have worked together. Except for Guillermo Francella who plays Sandoval, I worked with all the others. This was my fourth movie working with Ricardo Darín. In fact, both Ricardo and Soledad were the couple in my first movie several years ago. I had made a mini-series with Pablo Rago, who plays Morales. I think Pablo is a little Pacino. He's great and he's going to age in an interesting way. He's only in his early thirties. Even though I'd never worked with Guillermo Francella, he's a number one star in Argentina. At the box office, he's bigger than Ricardo, but more as a comic. He's kind of like Jim Carrey, not so much in style, but in his popularity for his broad humor.

Guillén: He lends considerable humor to your film as well.

Campanella: Exactly; but, not anywhere near the wild antics you can see him do in his other movies. I needed a strong actor with less screen time who could be equally and emotionally heavy as the other actors. No other supporting character actor had that ability. I needed a leading man to play that mousey character. But you're right, they all have amazing eyes, which I think are the markings of a movie star. They tell you it's in the eyes. It's not because they're green or blue—because Pablo has black eyes and you still see a lot in them—but, it's their acting ability. Even Javier Godino who plays the murderer has ambrosian features. I knew they were all going to be right.

When I was reading the novel, I had three actors immediately in mind: Ricardo, Soledad and Pablo. I saw Pablo playing the accountant Morales even though in the novel he is described differently as tall, lanky and blonde, which has nothing to do with Pablo; but, for some reason I imagined Pablo because I had just worked with him and I realized his eyes would work. I had never done such extreme close-ups before. I even had to find excuses to isolate the eyes. I wanted to have key moments where the audience would only look at the eyes.

Guillén: You captured excellently the choreography of looking, how a glance happens, most effectively in the scene where Irene catches Gómez obsessively staring at her breasts, convincing her that Espósito might be correct in his suspicion that Gómez was the murderer. That interchange of glances, without any words, was excellently rendered.

Campanella: Thank you so much.

Guillén: Though I'm admittedly unfamiliar with the work of Soledad Villamil, you elicited a wonderful performance from her. There was so much humor and love expressed in her eyes; what Diana Sanchez described in the program notes as "unspoken longing" and "an intimacy of mutual suppression." They also expressed her complicity and the compromises she had made.

Campanella: And the repression! There's a scene that I love so much where's she's really good. Espósito is asking her to reopen the case. At first she thought he was going to propose to her and then it ends up that he wants her to reopen the case. We hear his voice saying about Morales, "You cannot imagine what this guy's eyes look like. It's like love." She looks at him with such longing in her eyes flecked with anger that she can't talk about it. Soledad is wonderful, yeah.

Guillén: For a police procedural with such a grim subject—the rape and murder of a young bride—I was surprised by the film's ongoing humor. The humor was pitched perfectly alongside these horrific events.

Campanella: Thank you.

Guillén: Was that humor in the novel?

Campanella: Some it was, yes. Sandoval's habit of answering the phone and always pretending that he's somewhere else, that's in the novel and is based on reality. That's based on a character that worked with the novelist who always used to do that. His joke was to come up with increasingly wilder places. But, of course, there are whole scenes that are not in the novel. For example, Espósito and Sandoval never go to Gómez's house to look for the letters. The soccer stadium scene is not in the novel. The fact that they catch Gómez because of his passion for soccer is not in the novel.

Guillén: That rhythm of pacing the humor with the film's more serious aspects, does that come for you in the editing process?

Campanella: No, in the writing. I tend to write more humor than ends up in the movie. Ricardo and Guillermo are accomplished comedians—Guillermo, as I told you, is a comic—and we share a similar sensibility so that during read through and rehearsal, several weeks before we start shooting, we start choosing the humor that helps a scene and crossing out the humor that stops a scene or makes the scene too self-conscious. Basically in two afternoons we pared down the script. After working with that kind of style through a few movies, the writing becomes more intuitive so that there's less to correct when we get to rehearsal. I remember in Son of the Bride we did a lot of trimming.

Guillén: I'm intrigued by villainous portrayals. In El Secreto de sus ojos there are bad guys who I would characterize as cut from dark broadcloth. They're obviously bad and corrupt and you don't like their characters from the moment they're introduced and they never redeem themselves throughout the narrative. However, the villainry that affected me the most in your film was all the complicity with governmental corruption; the willingness to look away to further personal ambition, which—as an audience member—forces me to question my own capacity for complicity, my own lapses in integrity. Would I make similar choices? Would my job be more important than love or securing justice?

Campanella: You're observing all the mysteries in the main characters, the good guys. That's actually part of the debate in Argentina about the movie. Everyone understands in Argentina the choices they made in the past. As a society, we made choices. Evil crept up on us. It's a little bit like what happened to Americans after 9/11. Many liberties were taken away and people accepted that because they were afraid. In this story, when these corruptions begin happening in the government, guerillas were killing people, bombing, there was terrorism, and the Argentine people started looking the other way. Not with regard to saying, "Come kill them all", no, no, they would never do that; but, just looking the other way.

The scene that plays powerfully in Argentina is the elevator scene where Gómez has evaded punishment and threatens Irene and Espósito. Thank God it works because—when I was editing it—I was doubtful: "Does this work?" But it did work because it represents a society that has shut up and shut down; a society that has accepted fear. That's why I chose to set the movie in the pre-dictatorship days rather than during the dictatorship because everyone in those pre-dictatorship days were already succumbing to fear by refusing to talk about it. I wanted to show that moment where they make the choice of shutting up, looking away, and running away.

Guillén: For me that scene was important because it revealed Gómez for the unbridled monster that he was and, thus, later when I discovered Morales had kept him caged for years and had punished him further by never speaking to him, I didn't feel pity for Gómez, his punishment seemed justified, and—if anything—I felt for the darkness in Morales.

Campanella: You know, these kinds of things happened at that time. The military and government would have meetings with union leaders and start off negotiations by placing their gun on the desk. It was an intimidating act. It was a definite phallic symbol, even though these thugs knew nothing about psychology or phallic symbols.

Guillén: But they understood intimidation and power.

Campanella: Exactly. Still, there's a distinction in the movie that Gómez has not been freed by justice. He confessed and was convicted by the justice system. Morales hasn't taken justice into his own hands; but, he has taken over the execution of the justice that had been meted out by the court.

Guillén: By indirectly referencing the political shadows of Argentina's past, do you mean to suggest that the love story in El Secreto reflects a healing for Argentina?

Campanella: I think so. There are certain questions in the night that one might choose at a certain moment for whatever reason to not answer; to just let go. But those questions will always come back to haunt you. Argentina as a country is revisiting the '70s and those questions that have been haunting us. Unfortunately, in the '90s we sought to cover them up and ignore them; but, the truth remains that those questions will always come back to haunt you. These are questions that have to be dealt with in order for Argentina to move on. There are several things in Espósito that help him finally talk to Irene. He acknowledges that, in a way, though it seems he is stuck in the cage with Gómez and Morales, he's likewise been stuck in the cage of his impossible love for a woman who he has lost because of the impossibility of his love for her. There was a brief mention that he had married but was unable to love his wife. He shut himself off to love. In that scene with the cage where we see the three men through bars, Espósito is the one who can truly get away. Knowing what has happened, he heads for his love.

Guillén: Well, Juan José, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I wish you the best of luck with this project. I predict it will be Argentina's submission to the Academy Awards®.

Campanella: Well, there has been no other film that's won any festival awards.

Guillén: You're being far too modest. The film is enormously entertaining and ambitious. I believe audiences are going to be attracted to the film.

Campanella: It's the third movement of Beethoven's 14th sonata.

Guillén: Enjoy it!

Campanella: I will. Thank you so much.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: LA SOGA

Early on at this year's Toronto International, I had the chance to sit down with programmer Diana Sanchez to discuss the Latin American fare she'd programmed for the festival. Interested in whether or not she targeted Latin American audiences for Latino-themed TIFF films, she admitted she did not because there's not much of a Latino demographic in Toronto to target and, truthfully, most Latinos are not interested in the kind of Latin American art house fare favored by film festivals; preferring, instead, testosterone-charged action and sexy rom-coms. It's primarily non-Latinos who are interested in films by such art house luminaries as Lisandro Alonso and Lucrecia Martel, Sanchez suggested; a sobering if familiar insight I've heard from programmers of Latin American cinema, especially in the States, and now from Canada.

Nowhere was that divide in public taste more apparent than at the world premiere of Josh Crook's La Soga, a U.S./Dominican Republic co-production which is the only film I caught at this year's festival that received a standing ovation (the first of several, I understand, among its public screenings). The TIFF emcee for the world premiere commented that she hadn't seen such a public reaction since Slumdog Millionaire. Perhaps more important than La Soga being the most popular Dominican film at TIFF is its claim as the first Dominican film to play the fest. My thanks to Lauren Tracy and Scott Feinstein of 42West for pulling me a ticket for the world premiere screening.

As Jane Schoettle writes in her TIFF program capsule, "La Soga is a film of such raw energy and ragged beauty that these elements alone would justify its viewing. Beyond this, though, it contains a story both timely and timeless, brutal and elegant, for what is at stake is the redemption of a man's soul." Schoettle adds that La Soga is "a work of such poetic ferocity that much of its imagery will be stamped on the viewer forever." Well, forever is a long time. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that La Soga delivers what its audience seems to want right now: favela thrills, sultry erotics, torturous violence, and poverty beautifully lensed by Zeus Morand. If you're a fan of City of God (an acknowledged influence on La Soga) or Elite Squad, or even Sin Nombre, the film's flashy visuals and driving music score will fully satisfy you. It's not my café con leche, but I respect that it was beloved by its audience, some who bragged driving all the way from Boston to see it. At the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein writes that "La Soga is as much a meditation on the embattled Dominican culture as it is a crime drama" with a "soulful intensity."

There's no question that La Soga's writer/producer/lead actor Manny Perez has—as Stephen Holden at The New York Times phrases it—"charisma to burn." Whether or not his "redemption" is believable is another negotiation altogether, as it concerns recovering a lost innocence ("We all are born innocent," the poster's tagline reminds us) more than expatiating for murders too numerous to count. As director Crook states in the press notes: "In the film we follow a lost, hollowed-out shell of a man. He is a professional killer searching for the soul he lost a long time ago. I tried to bring to life that space we all live in when we were innocent, before we lost our way, when we knew who we were intuitively. The world changes all of us and while this is inevitable, we feel a longing for that self that was lost in the process. La Soga takes place mostly in the neighborhoods outside of Santiago, but La Soga, the man, searches for his soul in a place we all visit; a dream of what we were like before the world corrupted us."

Perez admirably tackles the conflicting nuances of Luisito, the sensitive vegetarian son of a village butcher (the film's original title was El Hijo del Carnicero / The Son of the Butcher) who—after witnessing his father's death at the hand of Rafa (Paul Calderon), a drug dealer deported from the U.S.—becomes the chosen assassin of General Colon (Juan Fernández), the head of the Dominican secret police who keeps promising to deliver Rafa to him for revenge. Luisito becomes "La Soga", which refers to the rope noosed around a pig being led to slaughter. The film addresses how the blind thirst for vengeance can leave one susceptible to corrupting forces; i.e., law enforcement in both the D.R. and the U.S. Lots of pigs get butchered in this film, as do a lot of deported drug dealers, and the resemblance is intentional if not overbearing. By film's end you want all these meatheads to be led to the chopping block, even if you don't necessarily want to hear them squeal. It's akin to not wanting to know how packaged meat gets into your local Safeway.

The audience for the world premiere had the opportunity to interact with director Josh Crook, writer/producer/lead actor Manny Perez, actor Juan Fernández, and actress Denise Quinones in her first feature role as Jenny, the childhood sweetheart who restores "La Soga" to his original innocence.

Perez related that he had worked on the script for La Soga for seven years, which grew from two seeds of experience. Born and raised in a small town called Baitoa in a rural area outside of Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, Manny and his family moved to Washington Heights in the United States when he was 11. Returning to Baitoa one summer, he adopted a piglet. The day before he and his Father were getting ready to return to the States, he woke up to what sounded like a child screaming. It was six in the morning. Manny got up and ran outside to find the local butcher stabbing the piglet to death, preparing it for his going-away party. The screaming of that little pig left a traumatized impression on him.

On a subsequent summer vacation, Manny met up with a childhood friend who had "gone bad" and been deported back to the D.R. from the U.S. While they were chatting, a bullet-ridden car pulled up, three men chased and apprehended his friend, who they dragged to the middle of the town and shot summarily in the head. Having witnessed both events, Perez later learned in test screenings of the film that such executions were happening not only in the Dominican Republic, but in every third world country. "So it's a universal theme," he emphasized. "It's not just about corruption in D.R.; it's about corruption worldwide." He's unsure of how the film, which offers a frank critique of political corruption in the Dominican Republic, will be received in its home country; but, he hopes La Soga will put the Dominican Republic on the Hollywood map in the same way City of God put Brazil on the map.

Asked what La Soga meant, Perez said it referenced a rope and that it became the nickname of his character. In the film when "La Soga" fucks with one of his victims, he says he's going to tighten the rope around his neck. It's a secondary meaning of what the rope means: to play with a victim, to let them go and then pull them back in.

Of all the stories that could be told about the Dominican Republic, Perez was asked why this one? After witnessing the death of his friend (on whom La Soga's character Fellito was based) Perez had to come to some kind of understanding of what he had seen. Without saying a word, this man dragged his friend to the middle of the town and shot him in the head. "I had to find the heart to get to the man who did that to a friend of mine. That's the reason for why this story came about."

Though Josh Crook admitted shooting the film was a complete pain in the ass, he acknowledged it was equally a profound experience to stay true to Manny's vision. Refusing auteurial credit, he emphasized the film was a thoroughly collaborative venture, from everyone in the crew, to all the people of Baitoa who fed them food and kept them going during the shoot.

Juan Fernández added that—when he first read the script—he recognized it as a story about the human heart. "It's a love story. That's what I felt after I read it. I made my decision after a second." Then he arrived early on the set to look into the eyes of Josh Crook to gauge who he was, how genuine he was, and how committed to the work.

Seeing La Soga at its world premiere was the first time Denise Quinones had seen the completed project and she was visibly proud of her first feature role. "I fell in love with Jenny's character," she confessed. "She's like La Soga's conscience that brings him back to life. She reminds us that those people we think are monsters really aren't; they're human beings."

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: HUACHO

As Diana Sanchez details in her program capsule: “An apt title for the film, huacho means ‘bastard’ or ‘having no father’ but can also mean ‘abandoned.’ ” Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ feature debut observes how four members of a southern Chilean peasant family are left behind by a modern way of life that does not include them.

Within the simple structure of a long summer day’s cycle, Almendras’ quasi-documentary tracks its four protagonists through overlapping narrative threads that achieve a threadbare honesty and intimacy. As much a portrait of their struggles to make do on limited means, Huacho skillfully captures the ignobility of work in the modern age. Grandma Clemira makes and sells cheese by the roadside to passing motorists who force her to sell her wares at less than what it costs her to make them. Her husband Cornelio has become too old to work in the fields and suffers for not being able to provide for his family, remembering better days when he could. Cornelio’s memories only annoy the young boy Manuel who longs for the kinds of things that will help him fit in with a clique of well-do-do classmates who ostracize him and call him “peasant.” Manuel’s mother Alejandra is raising him without a father and works as a cook at minimum wage. To get necessary money for the family to pay off its utility bill, she’s forced to pawn off her only nice dress. Sadness and frustration pervade all their lives, with scant relief in sight.

Manuel’s teacher writes on the chalkboard: “One day or another we will all be happy.” But what he’s referencing is death, not opportunity. The film achieves added poignancy for being dedicated to Juan Pablo Rebella who—Sanchez informed me—took his own life, unable to express the pain he felt in everyday life. Huacho holds a gentle mirror up to that desperate pain, reflecting loyalty to family and perseverance against odds, let alone one filmmaker’s homage to another.

As reported earlier on The Evening Class, Huacho received completion funding from the Global Film Initiative. Dave Hudson gathered the Cannes reviews for The Daily @ IFC.

Cross-published on Twitch.