Wrapping Latinbeat.

Déficit (an appropriate, nicely ironic title with at least a couple of meanings) is Gael García Bernal's first full-length directorial effort (almost; it runs 75 minutes, including credits), and it is a perfectly fine first-time-out. It will set no standards stylistically (in fact a couple of rather lame attempts at "style," including bizarre reflections of glass, indicate that Bernal might want to concentrate his efforts elsewhere), but as a director, he certainly knows how to cast well and to make maximum use of that cast. Literally every performer nails his/her role, and even though the ensemble is quite large, it is surprisingly easy to keep track of them all.

While Bernal has given himself the leading role, this is not what I would call a vanity production because the role he essays is such an unpleasant one: that of a faint-hearted, tiresome loser. Moreover, this is no villainous Iago-type, given to showy, razzmatazz riffs. Instead, the guy is a creepy little user, a never-grew-up hypocritical coward who embarrasses himself almost as much as he embarrasses us. He represents a sample of the Mexican rich and powerful, who are - here, at least - about to lose their precious standing.

Bernal and his writer Kyzza Terrazas are quite good at keeping their movie on-track and at capturing the many and varied responses that separate Mexicans by race and class. And while their sympathies clearly lie with the underclass, the filmmakers do not endow these people with sainthood. Anything but, in fact. Because they've kept the film short, it does not wear out its welcome, if you can use that particular word. What it does not do is break any new ground, though the one day and night of partying that the film encompasses does give us a slightly different spin on the subject of nailing the leisure class. Mexican society may not have seen something like this for awhile, although, from Buñuel to Y Tu Mama Tambien, Mexico has given us its share of variations on the theme, and much of Latin America has, too, from Argentina's La Ciénaga to Peru's Don't Tell Anyone. (One of America's recently - released and rare home-grown Spanish-language films Ladrỏn que Roba a Ladrỏn is another lightweight version.)

Not surprisingly, Déficit's single screening this past Saturday night was a sell-out, the only one during Latinbeat other than its opening night attraction La Misma Luna. Bernal clearly has his following, including a greater number of high school-aged kids than I have ever encountered during a foreign festival at the Walter Reade Theater. Overhearing them discuss the movie post-screening was almost as interesting as the film itself. Though the kids got neither the film nor the "star" turn they'd expected, some were able to rise to the challenge and confront what they'd seen, and so the conversation was animatedly pro and con. I should think Bernal would be pleased.

As director and co-writer of one of my favorite Cuban movies, La Vida Es Silbar (Life Is to Whistle), Fernando Perez and his new film Madrigal were at the top of my much-anticipated Latinbeat list. And for a while, I was alert and appreciative. A gorgeous young man, a member of a Cuban theater troupe, sees an overweight young woman - oddly, the only person in the audience that night - walk out after he makes eye contact with her during the performance. Currently sponging off relatives, he has no home of his own, while she lives alone in an enormous inherited apartment. (How does this work? Does anyone actually "own" real estate in present-day Cuba?) And so the two fall in love. Or do they? Our hero may only be interested in that spacious flat.

Following an "accident," he takes over the lead in the theater piece, an old girlfriend screws up his new idyllic love life, and Romeo and Juliet seem destined to stay apart. But then... But then what? Perez and his co-writer Eduardo del Llano seem unable to clarify anyone's feelings here. Who is this gorgeous guy and what the hell does he care about? He flirts/flits one way, then another, while the girl just goes to pieces. Finally, for the last half hour, we are in a story within a story that tries to turn the whole thing into a sci-fi meditation on "serious" subjects but comes off more like camp. The movie ends with a kind of coup de theatre, which it isn't, or course, since this is a movie, not a legitimate theater piece. So its "coup" comes off as little more than a "special effect." In fact, the "play" that is central to all we've seen seems itself to be a willfully ostentatious piece of hooey, as men dressed as nuns speak in unison, conflating religion and sex (or maybe it's love). Madrigal may not be quite as pretentious as the piece de theatre that anchors it, but it comes awfully close.

"Another TIFF film dealing with anxiety-riddled juvenescence, Déficit, suggests Richard Linklater by way of Andrew Bujalski," writes Eric Kohn at indieWIRE. "While not always successful at conveying believable exchanges, Deficit manages to be frequently funny and likable."

"There's a lot of comedy in this film, mixed in and surrounding the overall class tensions and underlying current of criminality, and it's to the credit of Bernal that it all meshes together so well," writes Ryan Stewart at Cinematical. "I noticed the audience members paying very close attention, undoubtedly because they had no idea where this film was going but were intrigued by the possibilities."

Posted by dwhudson at September 17, 2007 9:50 PM