San Francisco Dispatch. 1.

Mostly by complete coincidence, the first four films I've seen at the this year's SFIFF have all been Spanish language films - but each leaves its own indelible impression.

A startling elegy for Mexico, News From Afar (Noticias Lejanas) is director Ricardo Benet's striking debut. The film is constructed in a way that may be off-putting for American audiences accustomed to more straightforward narrative, and it does take a bit of time to adjust to figuring out whose point of view the story is coming from or where we are in time (I later found myself re-editing the first act in my head), but the film is very much worth sticking with. The story follows a 17-year-old boy (David Aarón Estrada) who returns to his home village, which is nothing more than a series of ramshackle adobes in the middle of a bleak salt flat, as his memories drift back to the childhood tragedy that altered his family forever - and to what happened when he left home for the ciudad grande (Mexico City). It's by turns touching, tragic, funny and, on occasion, shocking. The acting (with a cast made up in part of amateurs) is a little stiff at times and the writing sometimes labored (with a bit too much reliance on voice-over), but Benet smartly reveals details slowly over time, and the film finds its footing as it moves along. News From Afar, which looks sharp and colorful, works as both a sad nod to Mexico's crumbling infrastructure and as an ode to loss - a family's, and a country's.

Sólo Dios Sabe also journeys down those Mexican roads toward Mexico City, but in an entirely different fashion. Director Carlos Bolado, co-director of the superb documentary Promises, has created a highly watchable mess of a film, buoyed along by the two charismatic leads - Alice Braga (City of God), niece of sultry Brazilian actress Sonia - she looks like combination of a young Barbara Hershey, Jessica Harper and her aunt) and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También), who plays passionately love-obsessed about as well as anybody. It's a road movie, beginning in San Diego (where Braga's character teaches college) to Baja Mexico (where she becomes stuck after losing her passport), then off to Mexico City in the company of Luna's character, who tricks her into accepting his offer to drive her to Mexico City so she can get her passport.

Their journey eventually finds them in Brazil, with their characters experiencing much anguish in between. Sólo Dios Sabe is ultimately done in by its own melodramatic histrionics - in fact, the film is essentially an old-fashioned romance disguised under a cloak of modern cinematic flourishes - with a few too many of those unnecessarily detracting from, rather than adding to, its success. On the other hand, Braga is so mesmerizingly gorgeous, Luna so perfectly empathetic even after behaving badly, and the travelogue portions of the film - particularly a side trip to a ceremony in Bahia as Dolores confronts her mystical roots - so fascinating and beautifully photographed, that one almost forgives the film's overreach. Almost. Still, it's a road trip worth taking - you'll probably be engaged as often as you find yourself rolling your eyes at all the melodrama.

Montxo Armendáriz's Obaba is set in Spain's Basque region, where the titular (fictional) town serves as a sort of Basque Twin Peaks - if not quite as surreal. In a sense, the locals create the atmosphere based in part on their own imaginations. A young student travels to Obaba for an assignment in which she must videotape a location and its people, then edit her footage to make a story out of it - regardless of whether or not the story is actually true. However, while there she discovers there's a sinister side to the town's history, centered around the one-room school and the children of one particular class (not to mention a curious crop of endangered lizards), and the film then shifts from her perspective as she discovers more about the mystery, to each of the central players in these secrets of the past, to their own childhood POV and back again as adults.

What's less important yet more engaging than the central mystery is how the film becomes a study of story itself and of the ways people attempt to manipulate the past. What I mean is* the film's exploration of putting together a story from the scraps of the past we're given, as players in life's narrative. The film doesn't cry out to be longer than it is per se, but it does at times feel as if a few crucial pieces of the character's histories are missing. Armendariz's Silencio Roto, about Spain in the early days of Franco, is an underrated near-classic; Obaba is not quite up to that level, but it's a provocative work nonetheless.

The most pleasing of the four films here, Marcelo Piñeyro's El Método (The Grunholm Method, adapted by Mateo Gil from Jordi Galcerán's play), will make you want to double-check your resume. It's an extremely enjoyable and perverse exercise in psychological gamesmanship. It will inevitably put Americans in mind of Survivor and The Apprentice - not to mention The Mole - as potential job applicants are thrust into an office and a series of often cruel tests as they attempt to become the last one standing while also trying to sniff out which of them, if any, are the company's plant. Paranoia, backstabbing, and often hilarious debates ensue.

The film's more farcical scenes - including a memorable sequence set in the lavatories - are more successful than its attempts at broader political commentary. The cast, uniformly excellent, includes: Eduard Fernéndez, who's also in Obaba - there playing a mentally ill and vengeful former student, here perfectly cast as a sweaty and ultmately rather loathsome lawyer/jobseeker who still manages to garner some sympathy; Eduardo Noriega is most famous in the States for starring in Open Your Eyes and Piñeyro's Burnt Money, and he's a likable presence here; Najwa Nimri, whom I remember from the beautiful film Lovers of the Arctic Circle and also a popular singer in Spain; and Natalia Verbeke, who I've liked ever since Jump Tomorrow, as the receptionist (or is she?) Montse. If the ending doesn't completely satisfy - again, it doesn't connect as much as it'd like to with the larger geo-political picture unfolding outside - the bulk of the film is both gripping and lascivious fun. And it features the creepiest computer monitors this side of Japanese horror.

[*a reference to a line in the film the main character repeats]

Posted by dwhudson at April 24, 2006 2:32 PM