Dir:
Alicia Scherson, Chile/Argentina, 2005, 105 mins, subtitles
Cast: Viviana Herrera, Andres Ulloa, Aline Kuppenheim
Review by Angus Macdonald
An assured and extremely
well-crafted feature debut from Chilean writer-director
Alicia Scherson, Play has been wracking up impressive critical
praise as well as winning the Best New Narrative Filmmaker
award at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and the Independent
Camera award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
in 2006. A charismatic, well-plotted and languidly-paced
romantic comedy reminiscent to the films of Hal Hartley
(particularly The Unbelievable Truth and Trust) and with
more than a passing resemblance to Miranda July’s
Me and You and Everyone We Know, Play manages to be charming
and quirky while telling a story fundamentally about depression,
loneliness, obsession and stalking.
Cristina (Herrera), a young Mapuche country girl has recently
moved to the city of Santiago to work as a nurse. Lonely
but imaginative, she spends most of her time wondering around
the arcades and reading anthropological articles to the dying
elderly Hungarian she is looking after. One morning she discovers
a briefcase in her dumpster. Eventually looking through its
contents she becomes obsessed with its owner, a young architect
called Tristan (Ulloa). He, however, has just been dumped
by his beautiful girlfriend (Kuppenheim) and his latest building
project is in danger of falling through. Tristan is obsessed
with his ex and falls into a spiral of depression. After
being mugged one night, having his briefcase stolen (and
discarded in a random dumpster) and accidentally knocking
himself out, he decides to try and make sense of his life.
All of the while, he is unaware that Cristina has found out
where he lives and has started following him everywhere.
With outstanding performances from
Herrera and Ulloa, they perfectly portray a mix of loneliness,
confusion, childlike curiosity, with an always present
tone of sadness. Both of the characters are disconnected
from their surroundings in different ways: Tristan’s life has just fallen apart
and is having trouble figuring out why, while Cristina is
a bit of an oddball and a loner wondering around for the
first time in a big city. Scherson herself moved from Chile
to Chicago to study fine art and she manages to express that
feeling of being an outsider looking in beautifully. The
use of the cityscape in Ricardo de Angelis’ impressive
HD photography, as well as Scherson’s use of space,
is superb. She is also extremely good at showing life as
a series of seemingly banal or trivial moments (listening
to music on your headphones, eating breakfast, playing arcade
games) but giving them a poetic importance. The main theme
throughout Play is one of interconnectedness. Scherson jumps
back and forth through the narrative, showing moments from
two different perspectives and how the most trivial event,
object or action in one scene could have huge significance
in another.
While the pacing is easy-going it
is all extremely well-done and believable and although
the characters are kooky, eccentric or acting oddly in
terms of their problems (loneliness, depression, frustration),
the second half of the film loses its way slightly. Scherson,
in a need to either speed up the film or inject some unnecessary ‘magic realism’ into it, adds
some moments of fantasy and slapstick which stand out like
sore thumbs. In one, Cristina decides to fight a mother seen
berating her baby in a pram. As we know, Cristina’s
obsessed with arcade games and the film turns into a pixellated
effects scene with over-exaggerated Streetfighter noises.
Despite a small subtler moment nearer the beginning of the
film, this moment just doesn’t fit what has come before,
where everything was rooted in a realistic fashion and does
nothing but distract. Play also loses its way in its last
act, unsure as to how to conclude these characters stories.
The ending decided on is pretty limp and unsatisfying; leaving
the feeling that something substantial has just been missed.
Despite these moments, Play is an impressive debut. The
use of sound and music is extremely well done, bringing in
moments of imagination and fantasy into the otherwise natural
soundtrack. For example, when Cristina reads out her anthropological
articles, jungle and animal noises slowly seep through. Scherson
is definitely a director to keep an eye on.
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