Atentamente

If Camila Rodríguez Triana’s title brings to mind the necessity of careful thought- fulness as well as the reserved closing to an epistolary farewell, it is because feelings are indeed at the core of the film. Here, feelings are stripped of too explicit effusions and demonstrations, and the setting – a retirement home with bare, stark walls – becomes their very reflection, in the intimate portray of two elderly persons, Libardo and Alba. The mise-en-scene embraces this simple setting in which the loneliness of a single bed silently resonates through the hustle-bustle of life coming from behind window bars, beyond the surrounding walls, or through the memories conjured up by a father and his daughter in a room that looks like a prison’s visiting room.
The passing of time is punctuated by the romantic lyrics of songs on the radio, or the dialogues of the telenovelas that the residents are watching, which contrast with the restraint of the two lovers’ exchanges. The film’s beauty lies precisely in this triviality: hovering death is personified by the janitor’s well-worn ritual, while the love story we are being told centres around the 15.000 pesos Libardo needs to gather to offer his sexagenarian lover a double bed in a room just for the two of them. This endeavour is at once colossal and resolutely modest, just like that of the film itself, which seems to get rid of all the old tricks to simply relate us, in a both subtle and discreet flashback, the life of a man and a father. (CG)