March 11: La Soledad (2016 – Jorge Thielen Armand)

★★★★

Although it’s rooted in the current social situation in Venezuela, La Soledad goes beyond that in its reach.  Venezuela is a country in crisis, and the film shows us that as we watch a young man, José, struggle to keep his family together.  When his grandmother runs out of medicine for her hypertension, he can’t locate any more for her as her condition worsens.  Getting milk for his daughter’s breakfast turns into a day-long ordeal as he first has to get a coupon to buy it and then has to wait for hours to get into a store with little stock.  His brother becomes involved with a criminal gang and has to move in with José’s family to escape a vendetta, and José’s friends are constantly pressuring him to work with them in crime.  Meanwhile, he has trouble finding work.  He helps his white childhood friend Jorge, when there's work, and he carries materials at a construction site on occasion, but sometimes José can only stay home with his daughter when his wife goes to her job.  She is a housekeeper for a wealthy family, who works for low wages, but she eventually gets a better offer in Colombia though taking that job would break up the family.  All these pressures on José reflect the current situation in Venezuela.

To worsen matters, José and his family live in the decaying villa his grandmother once worked at and where José grew up.  The white family that owns the villa has long since moved, and Jorge, a member of that family who also grew up there, confides in José that the family is planning to raze the villa and sell the property.

All this would lend itself to melodrama, but as these external pressures mount on José, director Jorge Thielen Armand moves La Soledad into a mystical and psychological space.  From television, José becomes interested in finding a possible hidden cache of gold on the property, and his grandmother tells him a similar tale concerning La Soledad, although her story has a warning about a spectral guardian.  Meanwhile, his daughter becomes interested in playing ghost with him, pulling a sweatshirt over her head and waving her hands.  And José dreams of an old slave watching him in his sleep.  These elements dovetail nicely with the old photos José finds around the house and with his childhood memories of being in the house. As we learn early, some of José’s recollections are only memories of photos and family films; for example, though he remembers his grandfather, the man had already when José was born.  In the crumbling villa of La Soledad, these memories and ghosts blend and feel much like a García Márquez gesture, a magical realist flourish that expresses the psychological and social pressure on José.

Rodrigo Michelangeli's cinematography here adds to the atmosphere.  Scenes, particularly in La Soledad, often have a vaguely washed-out look to them that keeps us from seeing every detail clearly.  And Michelangeli also preserves some visual mystery by backlighting or underexposing shots.  In one scene, the young daughter dances around a statue in a dark room, backlit by a line of windows.  In another, the film underexposes José lying in bed so we see only a few unclear contours until the man’s face emerges from the pattern, and Michelangeli uses strong, single-source light in the the film's many night scenes to preserve some of the mystery of the scene.  Ironically, the choice to move to a graphic clarity at the end of the film amps up the tension and ambiguity of the concluding sequence.  Throughout, the cinematography is an important element of La Soledad.

This film gives us an evocative blending of social reality, psychology and drama, which makes the achievement of its 25-year-old, first-time director all the more impressive.  Armand was a recipient of a 150,000 euro Biennale College grant from the Venice Film Festival, and he had only a few months to complete the movie.  He based the story on his own experience, and he introduced a documentary element by having people play themselves in the film.  The director himself plays the autobiographical character Jorge, and José plays Jorge’s friend because he was the director's childhood friend.  This element adds yet another level of significance to La Soledad.

Armand directs this film in a delicate balance.  La Soledad takes us into a specific set of circumstances with specific people, but this specificity ultimately shows us something that is timeless and universal.  There are some technical weaknesses here, but there’s also a keenly-observed truth.

Atlanta Film Festival: Saturday, April 1, 2:30 pm at the Plaza Theater.
Worth your time.