|
Lorenzo Vigas (Venezuela, 1967)
debuted with Desde Alla/ From Afar (2015).
co-written with Guillermo Arriaga (Alejandro Inarritu's 21 Grams and Amores Perros),
an odd cross of neorealism, film noir and psychological drama.
In the first scene an older man eyes a younger man on a bus.
In the second scene the
middle-aged man is sitting and telling the boy, who is standing up and facing away, to pull down his pants so he can see his butt;
and then the older man masturbates.
This middle-aged man,
Armando, works diligently in a laboratory to make dentures.
He visits his sister, who is adopting a child with her husband.
Armando tells her that their father is back in town, and she admits that she
had heard the news two months earlier. Clearly this is an estranged father.
Armando stares at young males chatting at the corner of a street and then
he follows one and invites him to his place, and offers him money to strip for him; but this time the boy hits him and runs away with the money and a little statuette.
This boy, Elder, works in a car body shop and with the stolen money pays the
first installment on a used car.
He and his friends pick up steel bars and beat kids who are playing billiard:
the brothers of Elder's girlfriend.
The middle-aged man, with a bandaid on his eyebrow,
meets the kid again and offers him more money: the kid steals it again.
Nonetheless, they have lunch together. Armando acknowledges that he has
never been married while Elder eats all he can and then leaves when his
friends call him.
Armando takes a taxi to follow a car (presumably his father's).
He is sleepless at night.
The following day Armando enters a building and follows an older man (presumably
his father) to the 14th floor but then leaves without saying a word.
Armando's sister gets the child and throws a party to celebrate.
Armando looks for Elder, who has disappeared, and finally finds him: Elder
is lying unconscious after being beaten by his girlfriend's brothers.
Armando takes him to his place. Elder sleep for seven days.
When he finally wakes up from his quasi-comatose state,
they dine together and Elder talks about the father who beat him and died.
When Armando leaves the house, Elder tries to open his safe but Armando comes
back in time. Elder leaves.
However, he comes back and accepts to be taken to the hospital to fix what
is still broken. They become frends.
Armando buys his car. Elder admits that his
father is not dead: he is in jail for killing a friend of his.
They both have estranged fathers, and it's clear that Armando's father did
something very wrong to his children.
Armando and Elder spend time together at the beach. Elder introduces Armando
to his mother in a dancehall,
and suddenly Elder tries to kiss Armando in the bathrooms. Armando rejects
him and slaps in the face, but someone sees them.
Elder's mother is disgusted and kicks Elder out of the house. Elder moves in
with Armando.
Armando takes Elder to follow his father.
Elder offers to kill Armando's father.
They finally have sex.
Elder kills Armando's father but is later arrested.
He then made the
documentary The Orchid Seller (2016) about his artist father.
After relocating to Mexico, Vigas directed
La Caja/ The Box (2021),
co-written with Paula Markovitch and
photographed again by Sergio Armstrong.
The story of a coming of age, of a son looking for a father,
is mixed with a harrowing story of
exploitation of poor workers, particularly women.
A teenage boy, Hatzin (played by a non-professional actor), travels by bus to a remote mining town in a desert landscape to collect the remains of his father
Esteban, who died with others in a mining accident. The remains are coldly delivered to him in a tin box.
Hatzin doesn't seem to know his father: he only has a photograph of him.
He calls his granma that everything is ok and then takes the bus back home.
On the way he thinks he recognizes his father and gets off the bus, but the man
denies being Esteban: his name is Mario.
Hatzin takes the bus back to the mining village and returns the box saying it was a mistake. He calls granma and tells her that he cannot return home because
there was a mistake and claims that he has a place to sleep when in fact he has to sleep in the street.
In the morning Hatzin tracks down Mario and insists that hes his father.
Mario buys him breakfast and gives him money but still doesn't accept him as his son.
Hatzin looks for Esteban at the factories but nobody knows him. On the other hand, they know Mario: he finds cheap laborers for the factories.
Mario tries to get rid of Hatzin dumping him in the desert at a bus stop.
Hatzin walks all night back to the town and sleeps in Mario's car.
Mario is furious but takes him along to the place where he finds laborers,
mostly women (who are encouraged to compete with Chinese women who work very hard and very fast).
Hatzin de facto becomes Mario's assistant in his daily routine of hiring laborers and delivering them to modern factories.
Mario realizes that the boy is smart.
Hatzin learns from a young woman, Laura, that the workers are being scammed: they have to work more hours than agreed, they have to do things that are not in the contract, and they have to pay for the transportation.
Hatzin, in turn, helps Mario not to be scammed by the factories that sometimes lie about the performance of the workers and try to pay him less.
Mario gives Hatzin a room in his house.
One evening Mario reveals his dream to have his own factory and then shows the warehouse that he already bought: he only needs sewing machines and ironing machines.
One day they intercept a big truck at a gas station. Hatzin helps Mario ambush the truck driver and steal his truck full of sewing machines.
Mario's plan is to make clothes and toys for the USA, competing with the Chinese.
Mario has a pregnant wife.
Meanwhile, at the factory the young woman, Laura, keeps complaining about work conditions and Mario has to threaten her.
One day Mario transports a dead body to the desert and buries him, and tells Hatzin that it's better not to know who "he" was.
The following day he learns that Laura has disappeared.
Hatzin is beginning to have a crisis of conscience.
Hatzin watches silently a TV program about the many people who have disappeared in the country.
Hatzin looks for Laura but nobody has seen her. He finds her mother's phone number in Mario's files and calls her.
He makes an anonymous call to tell her that Laura is dead: he has made the connection that it's the body they buried.
Mario tells Hatzin that he hardly knew his own father, just like Hatzin, and that family is the only thing that matters.
Mario learns that Laura is dead because the mother reported it to the police.
Suddenly, Mario admits to Hatzin that he is indeed his father.
Hatzin is now always sullen.
Mario promises that he won't ever let him down again, and even gives him a horse.
Hatzin is more loyal than ever to what is now officially his father.
Laura's mother is back in town. She received a threatening note that they will
kill the rest of her family if she contacts again the police; but she doesn't give up.
When the police interrogates Mario, it is Hatzin himself who attacks Laura's mother and kills her.
It is now winter.
Mario's child is born, a girl. Mario asks Hatzin to hold his sister.
But then suddenly Hatzin jumps off Mario's car and starts walking in the snow.
Clearly something broke inside him. He almost freezes to death.
In the morning they find him inside a telephone booth, unconscious.
He survives and returns to the mining village to pick up the box that he had
returned as a mistake. He takes the bus home to granma.
(Copyright © 2015 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
|
|
