REVIEWS La Sirga Reviewed by Lee Marshall
A slow-burning Andean fable of considerable evoc- ative power, William Vega’s first feature is the latest in an impressive string of Colombian arthouse films that includes The Wind Journeys (Los Viajes Del Viento) and El Vuelco Del Cangrejo, on which Vega worked as assistant director. Set on the remote La Cocha lake high up in the mountains of south-west- ern Chile, the film overcomes the occasional art- film cliché to weave a dreamlike elegy about a war-torn part of Colombia that is at the same time a nicely underplayed coming-of-age story. Still, its charms are as much cerebral as emo-
tional, and while it will certainly garner a handful of deals in territories with robust world cinema audiences, La Sirga is unlikely to match the interest generated by Las Acacias, one of last year’s Latin American discoveries in Cannes. Sofia Oggioni Hatty’s carefully framed and natu-
rally lit photography establishes a strong sense of place and atmosphere, working with the produc- tion design of La Sirga — the leaky wooden lake- side inn where teenage Alicia (Arias) takes refuge with her reclusive uncle Don Oscar (Roble) from the violence that has killed both her parents. The perpetrators are not named but Colombians
will recognise the area as a stronghold of the FARC guerrilla army, and perhaps read a more detailed symbolism than the rest of us into images of fog,
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT
Col-Fr-Mex. 2011. 90mins Director/screenplay William Vega Production companies Contravia Films, Burning Blue, Cine Sud, Film Tank, Puntoguionpunto International sales MPM Film,
www.mpmfilm.com Producers Oscar Ruiz Navia, Diana Bustamante Cinematography Sofia Oggioni Hatty Editor Miguel Schvedfinger Production designer Marcela Gomez Montoya Main cast Joghis Seudin Arias, Julio Cesar Roble, David Fernando Guacas, Floralba Achicanoy, Heraldo Romero
distant thunder, bruised knees, abandoned mine- workings and a roof that fails to keep out the rain. Gruff but not unkind, Oscar reluctantly allows
his niece to stay. She helps his protective house- keeper Flora (Achicanoy), while the young boat- man who brought Alicia to her uncle’s house, Mirichis (Guacas), becomes her timid courtier, and his comings and goings act as a reminder there is a world beyond the mist-bound refuge. At some point Don Oscar’s absent son Fredy (Romero) returns from the city; he warns of imminent dan- ger, and tells Alicia the rumbling she can hear on the horizon is not thunder, it is something else. Alicia and Flora spend much time attempting to
patch holes in the wooden house and cover the roof with tarpaulins against the rain. Inside, the cracks
in the wall allow both Oscar and Fredy to spy on Alicia, who sleeps in the room between them — when she is not sleepwalking into the lake. Like a number of the film’s oneiric images (a
mysterious floating clump of reeds that the locals call ‘el morro’, a crucified scarecrow used to frighten ducks away from a trout farm), this sounds as if it could be unbearably ponderous. But Vega keeps things real, most of the time, by focus- ing firmly on Alicia (sensitively portrayed by Arias) and on a trauma and healing process that always feel credible. The ending is perhaps a little too allusive and
poetic for its own good, but is very much in line with this film’s quiet yet convincing build to a kind of redemption and maturity.
Screen_1-2s_org.indd 3 n 20 Screen International at Cannes May 21, 2012
15/05/12 22.05
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