Mariana

After the flamboyant Mambo Cool (FIDMarseille 2013), Chris Gude heads back to Colombia for his second film. Although we meet again with some quite remarkable character-actors from his first work – those who raise cigarette-smoking into an actual art, for instance – this time around it isn’t through the urban heart of darkness and its bars that they take us, but rather, much to their surprise, out in the wide open. Where, may you ask? Into the Guajira peninsula, a desert area near Venezuela’s border. Yet Gude’s way remains the same: instead of naturalism he opts for stylised and hieratic postures, instead of a flow of cues he opts for cryptic dialogues, instead of superfluous movements he would rather have fixed frames, and instead of the hazards of circumstances he would rather have painting-like frames that are meant to last. Although itself an aristocratic tribute of towering insolence, the film as it unfolds does not garner greater assertiveness, it does not take root, constantly allowing itself to be interrupted by humorous moments. Hence this forward tracking shot following a character before forsaking him and turning right in order to get some petrol. In a way everything is autonomous here: characters, settings, dialogues, camera. And the shaky jigsaw-puzzle that Mariana embodies does not seek its own completion in order to delineate any form of national map. This would be the wrong type of magic trick, of the kind that only makes animals laugh, as is illustrated in one scene. (JPR)