Our Time (15.)
Directed by Carlos Reygadas.
Starring Carlos Reygadas, Natalia López, Phil Burgers, Maria Hagerman, Yago Martínez, Eleazar Reygadas. Spanish with subtitles. 177 mins
Right from the start of his career, recognition of Mexican Reygadas as one of the world's best filmmakers has been held back by a lingering suspicion that possibly he's a bit of a creepy perv. Taking inspiration from Tarkovsky, Tarr, Bergman, Bresson, etc he has mastered the arthouse playbook of employing long takes, a slow pace and non-actors. But his taste for transgressive sex scenes and animal cruelty make viewers uneasy about what is really being communicated in his oblique narratives.
In this sprawling piece, he casts himself and his real-life wife as the central couple. He's your typical, everyday internationally acclaimed poet/ ranch owner who breeds fighting bulls, and she runs the online side. They have an open relationship, which comes under strain when she avoids being honest about a dalliance with a gringo (Burgers.)
At one point Juan (Reygardas), complains to his wife Esther (López) that their life is like a telenovela. Nobody will call this film a soap opera but compared to his previous films it is relatively conventional and much talkier: there are discernible emotions and dialogue is used to express how people feel. But, ultimately, the thing is as elliptical and inscrutable as you'd expect of a three-hour art-house drama.
For me, it seems a major step backwards from his previous film Post Tenebras Vox and that three-hour running time takes some committing to but there are some magical moments here. A lot of the film is people talking in rooms or under big skies but there are a few cinematic set pieces, beautiful long takes, that are staggeringly well done. Reygadas, his roving camera framing his characters against giant vistas, has a vision that envelopes them in the grandeur of the landscape around them and the effects are startling.
An hour in there is a sequence of her driving through rain, remembering an erotic dalliance and the camera cuts to a series of shots of the engine's interior and the whirring motor before finishing underneath the car and a blurred shot of her lovemaking. It is entirely random, in every sense of the word, but it jolts and intrigues like no other scene I've seen in the recent times. It's entirely unreadable, inexplicable and, thus, magical.
It's difficult though to take these people seriously. Is this a genuine exploration of the dark depth of a relationship, a true Eyes Wide Shut, or is it a put on in some way. His characters speak such total bollocks at times you can't believe that they are serious.
Reygardas and Lopez are really very good in the lead roles, so good they kind of defeat the purpose of casting non-professionals. They react like pros, so the only reason for the casting is the voyeurism of watching a real-life couple put themselves through this. Is it art, or tawdry exhibitionism? What kind of man has himself filmed, beautifully filmed, pretending to sneak around trying to spy on his wife pretending to have sex with another man? Especially as his script has his character manoeuvring her into these assignations. Sad to say this is a vanilla release with no extras which is typical because this is a film I'd really have liked to have heard the director's commentary.
Reygardas may be one of the greatest talents of our time, yet all his films apart from Silent Light have a mixed to negative critical reputation. Critics approve of that film because it adheres to the strictures of art house cinema and they can go over the similarities with Dreyer; they can praise it because it resembles the stuff they have praised before. His other films aren't like anybody else's, so they are lost.
Highbrow critics associate glacial camera moves and long unbroken takes with a cold and distant aesthetic, whereas Reygardas' South American take on this aesthetic is compulsively and indecently emotional. The man is the embodiment of too much information. Our Time may be a meandering indulgence with unengaging characters but if you can stick with it, it has a strange cumulative majesty. Reygardas may be a ridiculous figure but he makes films like nobody else. Granted, these are possibly films nobody else would want to make.
Directed by Carlos Reygadas.
Starring Carlos Reygadas, Natalia López, Phil Burgers, Maria Hagerman, Yago Martínez, Eleazar Reygadas. Spanish with subtitles. 177 mins
Right from the start of his career, recognition of Mexican Reygadas as one of the world's best filmmakers has been held back by a lingering suspicion that possibly he's a bit of a creepy perv. Taking inspiration from Tarkovsky, Tarr, Bergman, Bresson, etc he has mastered the arthouse playbook of employing long takes, a slow pace and non-actors. But his taste for transgressive sex scenes and animal cruelty make viewers uneasy about what is really being communicated in his oblique narratives.
In this sprawling piece, he casts himself and his real-life wife as the central couple. He's your typical, everyday internationally acclaimed poet/ ranch owner who breeds fighting bulls, and she runs the online side. They have an open relationship, which comes under strain when she avoids being honest about a dalliance with a gringo (Burgers.)
At one point Juan (Reygardas), complains to his wife Esther (López) that their life is like a telenovela. Nobody will call this film a soap opera but compared to his previous films it is relatively conventional and much talkier: there are discernible emotions and dialogue is used to express how people feel. But, ultimately, the thing is as elliptical and inscrutable as you'd expect of a three-hour art-house drama.
For me, it seems a major step backwards from his previous film Post Tenebras Vox and that three-hour running time takes some committing to but there are some magical moments here. A lot of the film is people talking in rooms or under big skies but there are a few cinematic set pieces, beautiful long takes, that are staggeringly well done. Reygadas, his roving camera framing his characters against giant vistas, has a vision that envelopes them in the grandeur of the landscape around them and the effects are startling.
An hour in there is a sequence of her driving through rain, remembering an erotic dalliance and the camera cuts to a series of shots of the engine's interior and the whirring motor before finishing underneath the car and a blurred shot of her lovemaking. It is entirely random, in every sense of the word, but it jolts and intrigues like no other scene I've seen in the recent times. It's entirely unreadable, inexplicable and, thus, magical.
It's difficult though to take these people seriously. Is this a genuine exploration of the dark depth of a relationship, a true Eyes Wide Shut, or is it a put on in some way. His characters speak such total bollocks at times you can't believe that they are serious.
Reygardas and Lopez are really very good in the lead roles, so good they kind of defeat the purpose of casting non-professionals. They react like pros, so the only reason for the casting is the voyeurism of watching a real-life couple put themselves through this. Is it art, or tawdry exhibitionism? What kind of man has himself filmed, beautifully filmed, pretending to sneak around trying to spy on his wife pretending to have sex with another man? Especially as his script has his character manoeuvring her into these assignations. Sad to say this is a vanilla release with no extras which is typical because this is a film I'd really have liked to have heard the director's commentary.
Reygardas may be one of the greatest talents of our time, yet all his films apart from Silent Light have a mixed to negative critical reputation. Critics approve of that film because it adheres to the strictures of art house cinema and they can go over the similarities with Dreyer; they can praise it because it resembles the stuff they have praised before. His other films aren't like anybody else's, so they are lost.
Highbrow critics associate glacial camera moves and long unbroken takes with a cold and distant aesthetic, whereas Reygardas' South American take on this aesthetic is compulsively and indecently emotional. The man is the embodiment of too much information. Our Time may be a meandering indulgence with unengaging characters but if you can stick with it, it has a strange cumulative majesty. Reygardas may be a ridiculous figure but he makes films like nobody else. Granted, these are possibly films nobody else would want to make.
