Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
As much as I liked the last Pablo Larraín film what I done saw, Neruda, I’ve not tracked down any of his other work. I’d like to say it’s because I fear they’d be more like Post Mortem, the other, significantly less enjoyable Larraín film I’d seen, but in reality it is simply the abject laziness that is the root of so many of my evils.
Still, I was glad to see Drew putting this selection in front of me, although I knew nothing about the contents of it. And to be honest, I think that’s absolutely the best way to approach this. Consider this forewarning, as even the most superficial recap will, I think, ruin this film. It’s not that there’s any major twists or turns here, but the structure of this film is for me its genius, and the way it unfolds was the most enjoyable thing about it.
Best analogy I can think of is that if the overall story of our lead character, the spirited dancer Ema, played by Mariana Di Girolamo, was a miniseries, this film is episodes three, four and five of it. The details of the earlier events aren’t hidden from you, but you’ll have to reconstruct them from the organic mentions of them as the story progresses. And also, I suppose, have to write your own end to the story as while this has the sense of an ending, and is structured accordingly, it’s also plainly a state of affairs that’s going to break apart just after the credits roll.
So, to roll this up into a sentence, while not telling you very much that’s not obvious in the first five minutes, Ema is in a tempestuous relationship with her choreographer Gael García Bernal’s Gastón, the most common flashpoint being dealing with the fallout of returning their adopted son Polo to the system after he proved to be a bit of a handful, a decision that Ema now greatly regrets and now seeks to rectify by any means necessary.
I think that’ll do you, to be honest. This isn’t a film that’s overly dependant on the plot’s throughline anyway, as that’s as much tied up with Ema’s character as it is her actions. And what a character she is, forceful, driven, seductive, manipulative, a femme fatale, particular given her occasional flamethrower wielding, which in retrospect was certainly something that Neruda missed.
It’s a really well crafted film on Larrain and co-writers Guillermo Calderón and Alejandro Moreno’s parts, that credits its audience with a modicum of intelligence and assumes they will pay attention to it, which I despair of having to laud as a positive point but so many films don’t, you kind of have to take what you can.
The supporting cast are entirely on point, although it’s Gael García Bernal and particularly Mariana Di Girolamo that deserve the plaudits for making this film a captivating experience that I recommend highly.