Nisimazine San Sebastian #2

Nisimazine San Sebastian 20th - 28th September 2013

Cannibal Gloria Sebastiรกn Lelio

2

picture of the day

Editorial Lucía Ros Serra (Spain)

We wouldn’t like you to suffer a long wait, that’s why we put on the table a brand new Nisimazine San Sebastian newsletter already, as an appetizer of the e-book focusing in the New Directors competition.

During the Zinemaldia not everything is about going into the 3D space of ‘Gravity’ by Alfonso Cuarón nor singing The Beatles in the 60s in the Spain of ‘Living is easy with eyes closed’ by David Trueba. The festival is also about cannibals wearing elegant suits and middle-aged women rediscovering themselves.

The selection of the festival is quite varied, it’s true that each year, there are certain common topics among the selected films. In this 61st edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival we can discover a nice bunch of films telling stories about duality or, what we care about in this issue, about middle-aged people. One of these films is ‘Gloria’, in the Pearls selection, a film about the accept of the maturity of a Chilean woman played by the magnetic Paulina García (Best Actress Award at the Berlinale) and directed by Sebastián Lelio. On the other hand, it’s also very easy to find unique topics as the one we find in ‘Cannibal’ by Manuel Martin Cuenca: a love story of a tailor who, casually, like to eat women meat.

Variety is the spice of life and also one of the most attractive qualities of Nisimazine.

Pour a glass of wine, cook a good steak (beef, not human) and prepare to read our second newsletter, because there is still a lot more to come.

Enjoy the reading!

NISIMAZINE SAN SEBASTIAN

20th - 28th September 2013 # 2 A magazine published by NISI MASA in the framework of a film journalism workshop for young Europeans.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Director Fernando Vasquez Layout Lucía Ros Photography Eftihia Stefanidi

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

Robyn Davies, Diogo Figueira, Lucía Ros Serra

NISI MASA

99, rue du Faubourg Saint-Dénis 75010, Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)1 48 01 65 31 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com

Cannibal

reviews

Manuel Martín Cuenca (Spain) – Official Competition

Titles can set a lot of expectations when it comes to films, and the sinisterly named Cannibal is no exception. A reference to the murderous acts of a handsome Spanish tailor (and his tendency to dine on his victims afterwards), the film’s title suggests a suspense-filled horror story with plenty of gore. But titles can be misleading, and it soon becomes clear that this feature takes a more subdued direction that’s far from expected – and is ultimately disappointing.

Set in Grenada, it focuses on the quiet and solitary Carlos. Well-dressed and involved with the church, he’s a valued member of society. But beneath his respectable exterior he harbors dark desires, ones that drive him to kill and eat the flesh of women he craves. When the sister of one of his victims comes searching for her, Carlos develops a complex relationship with her, torn between love and his desire for death.

It’s a visually beautiful film, set against impressive landscape backgrounds and atmospheric colours. Space is used particularly well, and scenes in which Carlos moves across a wide shot reflect his predatory nature with real subtlety. The soundscape is also effective, steering away from music and instead using noise (chewing meat, blood dripping into a basin) to steadily build tension. Even the dialogue is sparse - it’s almost ten minutes into the film before anyone speaks – and when it is used it’s never gratuitous. It brushes against humour, but never enough to forget the sinister topic. All this helps to create a kind of suspense that could have an audience on the edge of their seats, and for the first few scenes that’s exactly what happens.

Sadly that suspense is short-lived, and the film soon loses any momentum it originally had. While the main plot points are exciting they’re few and far between, and other scenes are too long to hold attention.

This is distancing, to the extent that it becomes hard to care about the outcome. Equally frustrating is the fact that Antonio de la Torre’s leading character has so much potential to be fascinating but doesn’t deliver. We never get into his mind – something that’s essential for a film about a psychopath.

Cannibal has some superb aspects, but without a backbone to hold them together they just don’t work. It’s too slow to be a thriller, not indepth enough for a love story and sets expectations it can’t meet.

by Robyn Davies (UK)

tential questions that foreshadow her drama: how to find fulfilling meaning. To search for it we usually look back at the years gone by and indeed many beautiful old age stories are about re-examining the past, fixing it and letting it go.

The past is definitely addressed here but what makes this film unique is how it puts weight on momentary passion and the future.

This is why sex is so important and recurrent, so carefully shot, and why we’re constantly feeling her fear of ending up alone - the two ideas blend when she’s lying naked in bed, disappointed. We can watch her because we never leave her: I guess there isn’t one single shot in which she is not present. She’s a drifter, drives frequently but we never see the wheels; just the face, via handheld camera and so realistic.

Gloria

Sebastián Lelio (Chile) - Pearls Our life is very much about wheels. The wheel is fortune’s favorite toy and civilization has been brought to us by wheels. We spin, endlessly. Pizzas are not squares.

Gloria loves to have fun at local nightclubs, has a sly smile for men who dance with her, a cozy one for the whole life outside and bursts into guffaws just because. She is in her late fifties but needs to keep it whirling. Then Rodolfo, about the same age, appears and makes her believe in a love story taking place during a very underrated phase of human life.

There’s a schizophrenic neighbor disturbing her with enraged exis-

Paulina García, who won the Silver Bear for Best Actress is unforgettable. I evoked comparisons with youth though her broken heart is not teenage angst, but wearied hope. Like the new Chilean generation demanding new rights (health and education), Gloria demands more life, and for this romance to work, Rodolfo has to be as demanding as she is.

Wheels produce energy and motion, but also vertigo. At a low point, Gloria gets dizzy for spinning so fast and for so long in a merry-go-round in the park and camera placement prompts us to similar loss of equilibrium. But in one scene, she goes to the hairdresser and that’s when Lelio sums it up, by referencing Kubrick’s wheels and classical music from 2001: Space Odyssey. He inserts the cosmic in the quotidian, the epic in the intimate, the black hole whirlpool in a new coiffure ready to go rock the night. She’s alive.

by Diogo Figueira (Portugal)

interview

again, after winning the Cine in Construction award last year. Even with the spotlights on your ongoing work, was it difficult to get it made?

Sebastián Lelio Director of ‘Gloria’ (Chile) - Pearls

After several months travelling across the festival circuit the multi awarded film Gloria finally arrives at San Sebastian. Diogo Figueira sat down with the director, Sebastian Lelio, to find out about the filmmakers process.

How do you approach character development and do you think about direction when writing the script?

Well, I think filmmaking has more to do with questions than with answers.

A theme should be more like a question than an answer. So, in a way, an open attitude towards the process is so necessary, even for characters.

While you’re doing it, you tend to discover new things about the whole film but also the character and about why

you’re doing it. Of course Paulina was always meant to be Gloria so I just didn’t have so much to do in a way. She had her body, her eyes, her energy, and that’s unwritable.

That’s what I love about cinema, it’s not about written words, it’s about what’s out in the world.

You premiered Gloria to amazing reactions in Berlin and Paulina even won the Silver Bear. Now you’re here in San Sebastián

Not really. It wasn’t a particularly complex film to make. You know, filmmaking is always difficult.

Starting from there, it wasn’t that difficult. But what was interesting was that we tried to find some international co-productions and we couldn’t get it because it’s the type of project that doesn’t sound too good on paper. And since my way of doing films relies on something that is not in the paper, you have to trust me. It’s not a high-concept. In a way, it’s quite conventional. That was exactly what was so exciting for me, because in a way it was about exploring the strangeness of the common places. You know, illuminating characters with a different new light and to allow people to see them like aliens.

Were you paying homage to Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey in the film?

Oh yes, I really appreciate that. That sequence is one of my favorites and it has a double quotation.

It’s a quotation to 2001, of course, with the circles and the classical music, and also to Death in Venice, because Mahler plays in the background and Bogarde goes to the hairdresser to make up, just before the ending of the film. In a way, it’s the same arc.

Interview by Diogo Figueira (Portugal) Photo by Eftihia Stefanidi (UK/Greece)