SFF NOTES: Desde allá (2015, Dir. Lorenzo Vigas)

Playing in similar territory as 2014’s Eastern Boys, Lorenzo Vigas’ Golden Lion winning Desde allá sees a middle aged man slipping into less than savoury entanglements with younger, poorer men he picks up from the streets of Caracas. The question of how insidious those entanglements are becomes a compelling engine for Vigas’ film. And, seeing as he wrote his screenplay from a story developed with Mexican writer and director Guillermo Arriaga (Amores perros, Babel), you can expect ambiguous misanthropy at its core.

Power and damage are foregrounded early in the piece, with the sombre protagonist, Armando (Alfredo Castro), repeatedly putting himself in harm’s way to build a relationship with the object of his supposed affection, Elder (Luis Silva). He draws him home, he gets beaten up and robbed, he returns the next day for more. But what at first appears to be some masochistic grooming exercise soon begins to vacillate between something sweeter and more sinister.

Off the back of two stoic performances, Vigas plays the shifting dynamics well. Much of the men’s backgrounds are withheld and as their lives are drip-fed to the audience the ground constantly shifts. Elder’s desires for men and for a father figure are disturbingly integrated, and his struggle to accept both give him a complex allure. On the other hand, Armando’s relationship to his own father is hinted to be even more shady and gradually presents itself as the driving force of the film. But Vigas is circumspect. He lets his characters do what they need to do, no matter how obsessive they become.

There’s a distance to Desde allá that belies its onscreen action and pushes it into something visually thematic. The bond the two men form, though physical (in both a violent and a sexual sense), is cold and self-serving and Vigas’ images, captured by long time Silva and Larraín cinematographer, Sergio Armstrong, expand the space that exists between them. Only the claustrophobic noise of Caracas jostles the men together as they navigate their conflicting desires. Their capricious push and pull rarely settles. Only when they remove themselves to the coast are they able to draw close – their turmoil then externalised in the tumultuous ocean. It is a touching scene that lays bare the film’s deep and abiding sorrow.

But Desde allá is not a film about what these men feel, it is about the mechanics of what they do. Their actions, spurred on by intimated motivations, are horrific. Vigas’ surrounds: the crumbling familial structures, the intense homophobia, the implicit poverty, provide the framework for the devastation but even this uncharitable social critique doesn’t prime the audience for the film’s callousness. Pushed further, this could have set Vigas alongside the likes of Larraín and Iñárritu. As it is, he’s certainly set himself on that trajectory. Hopefully, he keeps on the queer bent. Complex fare such as this is always more than welcome.

★★★☆

Trailer:

Desde allá screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.