Insomnia. Bruno (Torres) tries to sleep but can only think of Umberto (Oliver).
dir-scr Julian Hernandez
with Juan Carlos Torres, Mario Oliver, Roberto Cobo,
Clarisa Rendon, Salvador Hernandez, Miguel Loaiza, Guadalupe Marin
release UK Apr.01 llgff
99/Mexico 53m
It was a time when dreams gave way to long sleepless nights.... The full title of this stylish little Mexican film gives an idea of its dreamlike quality. Shot with old-style black and white cinematography and a nearly wordless script, it follows Bruno (Torres), a street hustler who falls in love with his friend Umberto (Oliver), who doesn't return the feeling. Umberto works at the local amusement park, and as Bruno walks the streets, piecing together their friendship and the disastrous grope that ended it, he gets increasingly despondent and desperate just to talk to Umberto again.
Each scene is titled with a notecard, like a silent film, and each shot is so carefully filmed and staged that it's nearly perfect. Light, shadow, sound and performance all work together--like a Welles film--to create a vivid atmosphere, eerie and brooding and profoundly sad. The story itself is told out of sequence, as we wander through Bruno's increasingly jumbled memories to find a way through the situation. But it all comes together with a resounding clarity as we feel his pain and regret. This is a stunning experimental film that shows great promise for writer-director Hernandez. Let's just hope his future films get out of Mexico, because very few ever make it to Europe.
| adult themes | • | 6.Apr.01 llgff |
