Dir: Paz Fábrega
Official Selection International Feature: Costa Rica
The Richter Scale says: Luciana and Pedro meet at a party. They meet once, he kisses her. They find each other a second time, she kisses him. For two days, they’re inseparable. They don’t know anything about each other outside of the small details they each let out on the way. They talk about what it would be like to have kids; they go on a camping trip together and make love again and again. That spontaneity brings a spark to the lives of these two individuals before they go back to what they had planned for life. Yes, this is the story of a man and a woman who meet and have an experience like no other that they don’t want to end, until life gets in the way. Previously-made plans and all those things that are not as attractive as this moment for one simple reason: life is quite charming when you don’t have to plan it.
This is director Paz Fábrega’s second feature film (her first was 2010’s Cold Sea Water). She shoots it in black-and-white, recalling the aesthetic qualities of Jean-Luc Goddard in the 1960’s. The film is built with conversations between these two characters that feature a single outside interruption from a cab driver who comments on their conversation. The film lives and dies by the chemistry of its two leads. Kattia González and Fernando Bolaños light up the screen with their chemistry and the director mostly gets out of the way and lets these two actors bring these characters to life (most of the sequences feel improvised).
It helps that these two actors understand their characters perfectly, one of them being more romantic than the other, but both just as spontaneous and adventurous. They are two young adults who seem at times as if no one told them they’re supposed to be adults. They sound like carefree teenagers wandering through life without a care in the world, until we realize the things that do matter to them and the maturity they show towards those things Not much happens in this film and the audience’s enjoyment of it will depend on how much they like the characters (which may prove a challenge for some), but it’s worth a look if only to see the bond the actors make with the director’s minimalist style.
This film will be shown today at the Ángela Peralta Theater at 2:00 pm and in Guanajuato City at the Auditorium of the University of Guanajuato on Thursday July 23, at 8:00 pm.
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