(no subject)

[chani]

Today I saw an Uruguayan movie...The title, Whisky, was defintely a good idea!

 

It starts lonely people, hopless people stuck in dull lives, behaving like machines or ghosts.

Jacobo took care of his sick mother until she died (ah the weight of the Jewish mother!). Jacobo owns an old factury of socks in which he works every day with his assistant Marta and 2 workers (women again). Jacobo is God in his factory and yet he's obviously miserable and lonely. Could he escape? Does he dream? Is there a ladder somewhere? Sorry couldn't help....

Marta is also a very lonely middle-aged woman. But while doing the same gesture day after day, she seems to wait for something to happen. Every morning she's waiting for her boss in front of the factury. Perhaps she's waiting for Godot...

Both Jacobo's and Marta's lives are plagued by the most painful silent routine, with no hopes for a better future. The camera shows their everyday life in repetitive scenes when they arrive at the factory in the morning, when Marta serves some tea, when she checks the workers' bags at the end of a long day of work(oh yes Jacobo's world is kinda fascist!). Even Marta's language is repetitive. But we can guess that she's burning for change, love maybe( we found out that she likes the telenovelas from Brazil), that she wants to escape since she keeps listening to her walk-man. Music is a key element there.

Someday something happens. Jacobo's younger and successful brother Herman, who lives in Brazil, comes to Uruguay to stay for the mother's Matzeivah. Herman has a family (2 beautiful daughters) and he keeps travelling while Jacobo is alone (no family, no children...he only has 2 workers !) and his life is changeless. They have opposite personalities and don't get along very well. Jacobo doesn't want to cope with his brother all by himself. So he asks Marta if she will pretend to be his wife for a few days...

The triangle is convenient but it isn't a film about a triangle actually, despite the two brothers' competition (after all they keep giving to each other the same gifts!) and despite Marta being between them in this "huis-clos".

Jacobo's factury is the metaphor of Uruguay...an old country in need of restoration and updating. But Jacobo himself can't move on, despite the return of his brother, despite the deal with Marta, despite the trip to Piriápolis into which he's talked. He's scared and stuck, stubborn and blind, unable to change.

Why Whisky? Because it's the word used to make people smile on pictures, like "cheers". And it's all fake, just like Jacobo's marriage. Jacobo is into whisky (we make out a glass on his bedside table btw), because he's into pictures, unable to move on from the past (and his dead mother's stuff!) while Marta is into music!

The film is about a journey, Marta's slow transformation, and a non-journey at once. The more Marta is changing, freeing herself, the more Jacobo's rusty self is obvious. Marta learns to enjoy life and in the end her true tears reply to Jacobo's fake Whisky-smile. Jacobo is a tragic character, and this film is a portrait of a man with no future. It's too late for him but there's hope for Marta, so the movie isn't completely pessimistic.

So yes this was a good movie, subtle, very well played by middle-aged actors(we're far from Hollywood botox and histrionic acting here!), but I think that what I liked the best was certain shots showing little details, close-ups under the tables among the bits of fluff or when characters' body are cut by the frame. Marta and Jacobo often don't fit in the frame together, not because they would be bigger than life but because they aren't completed and their universe, Jacobo's world, is so confined as is his narrow vision of the world. We could think they would match at the beginnning of the movie, but actually they don't. Also Jacobo is very tall and there's often missing parts of him on screen. He's kinda already decaying. Those shots are arty and poetical, "preciosos" as Marta would say, and the movie becomes a little gem then.

 

So well I recommend it!

 

Comments

Movie Review

[t007.livejournal.com]

This looks like a great movie. I'll look for it here. Thanks!