Post Tenebras Lux. (18.)
Directed by Carlos Reygadas.
Starring Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo, Willebaldo Torres, Rut Reygadas and Eleazar Reygadas. In Spanish with subtitles. 115 mins
Though l may come across as grouchy and perpetually discontented, I really don’t ask much of the cinema: just that it shakes me to my very core and shows me something I’ve never seen before and could never conceive of. Do that and I’m easily pleased.
Mexico's Carlos Reygadas's most acclaimed film Silent Light is remembered best for its stunning opening and closing scenes, lengthy unbroken shots of the sun coming up and setting over the same country horizon. Doesn't seem like much written down but on screen they were simply astonishing. For his latest film, he's come up with an opening scene that surpassed those: a small girl wanders around amongst livestock – cattle, horses and dogs - in the Mexican countryside at dusk as a thunderstorm approaches. Reygadas employs an extreme focus that makes it look as if it was shot through the bulb casing of a lighthouse lamp. The effect is extraordinary – innocent and charming yet disturbing and with a quite sickening sense of foreboding. In the next scene, a red demon explores a family house at the night.
Two scenes in and already audience know that they are going to get thrown around. Like Holy Motors, the thrill of Post Tenebras Lux is having no idea what is going to happen next, and yet somehow feeling sure that it does on some level make sense, even if doesn't quite to you. The film centres on an affluent couple who have decided to build a home and raise a family in the fecund Mexican countryside. From there though the narrative splinters off in every direction, springing back and forth in time and possibly skipping over into parallel realities.
There is a suspicion with Reygardas that he is a maker of arty films rather than an actual film artist; a genre filmmaker whose pretensions are the equivalent of Michael Bay's explosions and bikini-clad hard bodies. Maybe so, but here he has come up with something that is quite singular. Yes, it is opaque and inscrutable in the standard arthouse manner, but it is also a painfully simple and direct expression of the fears and insecurities provoked by parenthood. .
Directed by Carlos Reygadas.
Starring Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo, Willebaldo Torres, Rut Reygadas and Eleazar Reygadas. In Spanish with subtitles. 115 mins
Though l may come across as grouchy and perpetually discontented, I really don’t ask much of the cinema: just that it shakes me to my very core and shows me something I’ve never seen before and could never conceive of. Do that and I’m easily pleased.
Mexico's Carlos Reygadas's most acclaimed film Silent Light is remembered best for its stunning opening and closing scenes, lengthy unbroken shots of the sun coming up and setting over the same country horizon. Doesn't seem like much written down but on screen they were simply astonishing. For his latest film, he's come up with an opening scene that surpassed those: a small girl wanders around amongst livestock – cattle, horses and dogs - in the Mexican countryside at dusk as a thunderstorm approaches. Reygadas employs an extreme focus that makes it look as if it was shot through the bulb casing of a lighthouse lamp. The effect is extraordinary – innocent and charming yet disturbing and with a quite sickening sense of foreboding. In the next scene, a red demon explores a family house at the night.
Two scenes in and already audience know that they are going to get thrown around. Like Holy Motors, the thrill of Post Tenebras Lux is having no idea what is going to happen next, and yet somehow feeling sure that it does on some level make sense, even if doesn't quite to you. The film centres on an affluent couple who have decided to build a home and raise a family in the fecund Mexican countryside. From there though the narrative splinters off in every direction, springing back and forth in time and possibly skipping over into parallel realities.
There is a suspicion with Reygardas that he is a maker of arty films rather than an actual film artist; a genre filmmaker whose pretensions are the equivalent of Michael Bay's explosions and bikini-clad hard bodies. Maybe so, but here he has come up with something that is quite singular. Yes, it is opaque and inscrutable in the standard arthouse manner, but it is also a painfully simple and direct expression of the fears and insecurities provoked by parenthood. .
