My first three-film day! (I’m past the point of reasonably doing 4 or 5.) The following are in descending order of preference, with my favorite of them proof that occasionally, those chosen on a whim turn out to be hidden gems.
NOSOTROS
Married to an indigenous woman in a small Guatemalan village, Romero (Jozef Coxaj) temporarily leaves her and their young child behind to make some money in the city. He finds a job as a security guard; to his coworkers, he refers to having a sister back home, but not a wife. One day, he meets Nubia (Lola Vasquez), who is transgender and owns a shop in the mall where he works. While he doesn’t find much in common with his macho colleagues, he immediately falls for her.
Director Joaquin Ruano’s debut feature is remarkable for how naturally this all comes together. No dramatic revelation of Nubia’s gender identity or any crossed wires between her and Romero (apart from the secret he keeps about his wife)—they simply meet cute, acknowledge their connection and go for it, enjoying each other’s company at a bar, then renting a hotel room, consummating their relationship without fuss. Coxaj and Vasquez have palpable chemistry and the latter shows a real ease on screen while also cutting a striking figure and presence.
I’ve made Nosotros sound like a straightforward picture, but Ruano’s narrative follows its own path, upending expectations about two-thirds of the way through with a shocking turn that almost entirely reroutes the film’s trajectory. It then comes to a full stop at another abrupt but correct moment where one comes to see that it’s about more than one relationship, that life itself is about continuously moving forward, all of us together.
THE BELOVED
The first 15-20 minutes are solely a conversation in a Madrid restaurant between Esteban (Javier Bardem), a middle-aged filmmaker with a bad boy reputation and Emilia (Victoria Luengo), a young actress to whom he’s offered a part in his next picture. Shot almost entirely in uncomfortable closeups back and forth between the two of them, one soon learns that they already know each other although the exact nature of their relationship doesn’t reveal itself until near the conversation’s end when it unexpectedly turns heated and volatile.
Although the rest of the film breathes within wider vistas, this bravura sequence is typical of director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s approach. He often favors big gestures such as fly-on-the-wall camera movements, sudden shifts into black-and-white or another film stock, lengthy, unbroken shots, etc. Is it him simply showing off or forging a meta-critique of the prototypical tyrannical director (for the film rarely excuses Esteban’s behavior)? It’s a bit of both, actually as much of the film post-opening unfolds on shooting sets, the professional and personal connections between Esteban and Emilia forever blurring.
Bardem delivers some of his best work ever here and Luengo (who has appeared in a few Almodovar films) successfully tackles a challenging role that could be her breakthrough if enough people see her performance. Engaging and rarely boring, the film’s only problem is its occasional misshapenness, especially towards the conclusion as Sorogoyen cycles through four or five fake endings. With some more judicious editing, The Beloved could’ve been up to the sterling level of its two leads.
ANCESTORS
Watching the opening sequence I thought, “This should have been called Shoegaze: The Movie” and not just because of the gauzy, dense Cocteau Twins-esque music in the opening sequence. Set in late 1980s UK (roughly around the passage of Section 28 banning local officials from “promoting homosexuality”), Ancestors is a flashback to another era, re-created by director David Turpin and his crew and then run through a heavy dream reverie filter. It centers on Beau (Éanna Hardwicke), a gay Irishman who has left his provincial origins for London, and Tiny (Jack Wolfe), a younger, scrappier drifter with whom he gradually bonds with. An aged Rupert Everett’s also in this; he seems to be turning into Stephen Fry–a good thing, I guess?
It’s feasible to adore a film’s aesthetic, the pointillist world it conjures not so much as a mirror of one’s own but its rare essence while also acknowledging that it’s just that, a construct. I felt deeply receptive to what Turpin was attempting to express here, the queer-forward worlds of My Beautiful Laundrette and Derek Jarman films a generation or two removed. However, my guard also went up. I could say Turpin really goes for it with the symbolic imagery but it might’ve worked better if Tiny was an actual character rather than a rough construct. Today, when the AIDS epidemic increasingly feels like a memory threatening to fade into the ether, the film’s effort to remind one why it shouldn’t be forgotten or glossed over is admirable. Unlike a contemporary, galvanizing portrait of the era such as 2014’s Pride, this seems content to lovingly conjure the surfaces but not necessarily that crucial why.
