May films / películas de mayo

May was a pretty busy month for me so I only have time to watch 2 films. Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (2023) is a magnificent and deeply touching film about Paul Giamatti (Parkland), a teacher whose whole life revolves around the exclusive boarding school he works for, and Dominic Sessa one of his students, who is left behind during Christmas. As a teacher, Giamatti is disliked by most of his pupils, he’s tremendously strict and demanding, and clearly cares very little about what others think about him. Sessa is a talented teen that is constantly fighting with his classmates. Being in close proximity proves to be quite challenging for the middle aged man and the teenager, but despite the initial confrontations and disagreements, soon a unique friendship between them starts. In different stages of their lives, both characters feel abandoned and even ostracized, and together they must redefine who they are and rediscover the value of meaningful connections.

Priscilla (2023) might very well be Sofia Coppola’s least interesting movie, which is quite surprising, given the fact that she always has a unique perspective on female characters. Jacob Elordi (Saltburn) plays Elvis Presley, the superstar singer that has captured the attention and the hearts of millions of fans all over the world. While stationed in Germany, Elvis meets Priscilla, played by Cailee Spaeny, a 14-year-old girl whose conservative parents do not approve of their little girl dating a 24-year-old man. We see the upheavals of their relationship, their conflicts, and eventually the end of their marriage. But there isn’t really anything here that can capture our attention. It was hard for me to believe Coppola was the director of something so bland. 

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Estuve bastante ocupado en mayo así que sólo tuve tiempo para ver 2 films. The Holdovers (2023), de Alexander Payne, es una película magnífica y  profundamente conmovedora sobre Paul Giamatti (Parkland), un maestro de escuela cuya vida gira en torno al exclusivo internado para el que trabaja, y Dominic Sessa, uno de sus alumnos, que se queda ahí durante la Navidad. Como profesor, Giamatti es detestado por la mayoría de sus alumnos, es tremendamente estricto y exigente, y claramente le importa muy poco lo que los demás piensen de él. Sessa es un adolescente talentoso que constantemente pelea con sus compañeros de clase. La repentina cercanía resulta ser todo un desafío para el hombre de mediana edad y el adolescente, pero a pesar de las confrontaciones y desacuerdos iniciales, pronto comienza una amistad única entre ellos. En diferentes etapas de sus vidas, ambos personajes se sienten abandonados e incluso marginados, y juntos deben redefinir quiénes son y redescubrir el valor de las conexiones significativas.

Priscilla (2023) es, acaso, la película menos interesante de Sofia Coppola, lo cual resulta bastante sorprendente, dado que siempre tiene una perspectiva única sobre los personajes femeninos. Jacob Elordi (Saltburn) interpreta a Elvis Presley, el cantante superestrella que ha capturado la atención y los corazones de millones de fans en todo el mundo. Mientras está en Alemania, Elvis conoce a Priscilla, interpretada por Cailee Spaeny, una chica de 14 años cuyos conservadores no aprueban que su hijita salga con un hombre de 24 años. Vemos los trastornos de su relación, sus conflictos y, finalmente, el fin de su matrimonio. Pero realmente no hay nada aquí que pueda captar nuestra atención. Me costó creer que Coppola fuera la directora de algo tan soso.

January films / películas de enero

The first month of 2024 started with a combination of new and old productions. Let’s start with the most recent one: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert direct Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), an intergenerational tale that takes place not only in our universe but rather throughout the multiverse, as several alternative realities and alternative versions of the main characters interact and collide with each other. Michelle Yeoh is an Asian woman trying to keep her business afloat, a coin operated laundromat, while trying to save her marriage with Ke Huy Quan, improve the relationship with her daughter and organize her taxes while being audited by the strict Jamie Lee Curtis. In the middle of all of this, the protagonist is contacted by alternative versions of her family. Is she destined to save the multiverse or is she simply an immigrant about to have her assets confiscated by the IRS? The directors create a fun, fast-paced story in which sci-fi concepts coexist with the woes of daily life. There are some really good moments, especially when the protagonist finally embraces the fact that her daughter is lesbian and understands why she must be proud as a mother. Yeoh’s great performance deserves all the accolades it can get. 

Written and directed by Matt Ross, Captain Fantastic (2016) is a riveting and courageous exploration of life within a unique family, in which the patriarch, once a respected intellectual and academic, Viggo Mortensen, has decided to take his wife and children apart from society, living in an isolated forest, eating whatever nature has to offer while undergoing a severe physical training that is only equaled by the demanding intellectual tasks that all must complete on a daily basis. At times we sympathize with the protagonist’s inflexible philosophical and ideological stance, who often criticizes the ignorance of average Americans as well as their obesity, but his carefully laid out plans start to fall apart when his wife returned to civilization to treat her cancer. When the family is informed of her death, everyone wants to attend the funeral, even though that means breaking the sacred rules in order to reenter into today’s world. What follows is a long journey throughout the US, as the father reluctantly takes his children to the funeral, knowing full well that he might lose custody over them as soon as they meet their grandfather Frank Langella (Robot & Frank). The cast also includes George MacKay (1917) and Nicholas Hamilton. Emotional intense moments, very original characters and amazing performances, turn this into a must see.

The Virgin Suicides (1999) is Sofia Coppola’s opera prima, a deeply evocative film full of sadness and despair based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel. In the middle of a perfect American suburb in the 70s, James Woods (Videodrome) and Kathleen Turner are the conservative and very religious parents of Kirsten Dunst (All Good Things) and her sisters. All these girls are being raised under the most severe and strict rules, isolated from the world and trapped into an archaic concept of virginity. Jonathan Tucker, Hayden Christensen and other teenage boys feel strongly attracted to the girls, they’re after all the forbidden fruit. But only the coolest kid in high school, Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer), will come close to one of the sisters. The sexual awakening and the burgeoning desire of the protagonists is an important element, but so is the confusion, the clumsiness and the insecurity of those years. When the youngest sister commits suicide, the tragedy is merely beginning. The boys and neighbors try to understand what’s going on inside that house, but no one can pierce that invisible and indestructible cage disguised as puritanic values. A magnificent film that I was impatient to rewatch. 

The Faculty (1998), directed by Robert Rodriguez, is definitely one of my favorite horror movies from the 90s. For most kids, their teachers are strange and incomprehensible, but here Salma Hayek (Lonely Hearts), Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Jon Stewart and the rest of the teachers are alien creatures. But how can you figure out who is human and who is an alien? How can you decide whom to trust? Elijah Wood (Hooligans) is a nerdy teenager bullied by his classmates, and humiliated by his parents after they discover his secret stash of porn; Josh Hartnett (Black Mirror) is the cool kid who likes to flirt with older woman and sells drugs in the school parking lot; Shawn Hatosy is the jock who has suddenly decided to give up sports and focus on his academics, and Jordana Brewster is the director of the school paper, and one of the most beautiful girls around. Together they must discover a way to stop this alien invasion before it’s too late, and when one of them suggests that taking certain illegal drugs might help them detecting the aliens, chaos ensues. I always thought that was a brilliant idea, because if drugs can alter our perception, then the premise that the adults are aliens in disguise can be a paranoid fantasy. The Faculty has it all: great performances, clever references to classic sci-fi novels and scenes full of suspense.

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El primer mes del 2024 comenzó con una combinación de producciones nuevas y antiguas. Empecemos por la más reciente: Daniel Kwan y Daniel Scheinert dirigen Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), un relato intergeneracional que se desarrolla no sólo en nuestro universo sino en todo el multiverso, mientras varias realidades alternativas y versiones alternativas de los personajes interactúan y chocan entre sí. Michelle Yeoh es una mujer asiática que intenta mantener a flote su negocio, una lavandería de autoservicio, mientras intenta salvar su matrimonio con Ke Huy Quan, mejorar la relación con su hija y organizar sus impuestos mientras tiene una auditoría con la estricta Jamie Lee Curtis. En medio de todo esto, la protagonista es contactada por versiones alternativas de su familia. ¿Está destinada a salvar el multiverso o es simplemente una inmigrante a punto de que el fisco le confisque sus pertenencias? Los directores crean una historia divertida y trepidante en la que los conceptos de ciencia ficción conviven con los malestares de la vida cotidiana. Hay momentos realmente buenos, especialmente cuando la protagonista finalmente acepta el hecho de que su hija es lesbiana y comprende por qué debe estar orgullosa como madre. La gran actuación de Yeoh merece todos los elogios que pueda recibir.

Escrita y dirigida por Matt Ross, Captain Fantastic (2016) es una fascinante y valiente exploración de la vida dentro de una familia única, en la que el patriarca, alguna vez un respetado intelectual y académico, Viggo Mortensen, ha decidido separar a su esposa e hijos de la sociedad, viviendo en un bosque aislado, comiendo todo lo que la naturaleza tiene para ofrecer mientras somete a todos a un severo entrenamiento físico que sólo es igualado por exigentes tareas intelectuales que deben completar a diario. A veces simpatizamos con la inflexible postura filosófica e ideológica del protagonista, quien a menudo critica la ignorancia del estadounidense promedio así como su obesidad, pero sus planes cuidadosamente trazados comienzan a desmoronarse cuando su esposa regresa a la civilización para tratar su cáncer. Cuando la familia se entera de su muerte, todos quieren asistir al funeral, aunque eso signifique romper las reglas sagradas y reingresar al mundo de hoy. Lo que sigue es un largo viaje por los Estados Unidos, mientras el padre lleva a sus hijos al funeral a regañadientes, sabiendo muy bien que podría perder la custodia de ellos tan pronto como vean a su abuelo Frank Langella (Robot & Frank). El elenco también incluye a George MacKay (1917) y Nicholas Hamilton. Momentos emotivos e intensos, personajes muy originales y actuaciones sorprendentes, la convierten en una película imprescindible.

The Virgin Suicides (1999) es la ópera prima de Sofia Coppola, una película profundamente evocadora, llena de tristeza y desesperación basada en la novela de Jeffrey Eugenides. En medio de un perfecto suburbio estadounidense de los 70s, James Woods (Videodrome) y Kathleen Turner son los padres conservadores y muy religiosos de Kirsten Dunst (All Good Things) y sus hermanas. Todas estas chicas están siendo criadas bajo las reglas más severas y estrictas, aisladas del mundo y atrapadas en un concepto arcaico de virginidad. Jonathan Tucker, Hayden Christensen y otros adolescentes se sienten fuertemente atraídos por las chicas; después de todo, son el fruto prohibido. Pero sólo el chico más popular de la escuela secundaria, Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer), se acercará a una de las hermanas. El despertar sexual y el deseo creciente de los protagonistas es un elemento importante, pero también lo es la confusión, la torpeza y la inseguridad de aquellos años. Cuando la hermana menor se suicida, la tragedia apenas ha comenzado. Los muchachos y los vecinos intentan entender qué pasa dentro de esa casa, pero nadie puede traspasar esa jaula invisible e indestructible disfrazada de valores puritanos. Una película magnífica que estaba impaciente por volver a ver.

The Faculty (1998), dirigida por Robert Rodríguez, es definitivamente una de mis películas de terror favoritas de los 90s. Para la mayoría de los chavales, sus profesores son extraños e incomprensibles, pero aquí Salma Hayek (Lonely Hearts), Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Jon Stewart y el resto de profesores son criaturas alienígenas. Pero, ¿cómo puedes saber quién es humano y quién es extraterrestre? ¿Cómo puedes decidir en quién confiar? Elijah Wood (Hooligans) es un adolescente nerd acosado por sus compañeros de clase y humillado por sus padres después de que descubren su escondite secreto de pornografía; Josh Hartnett es el chico popular al que le gusta coquetear con mujeres mayores y vender drogas en el estacionamiento de la escuela; Shawn Hatosy es el deportista que de repente ha decidido dejar los deportes y centrarse en sus estudios, y Jordana Brewster es la directora del periódico escolar y una de las chicas más bellas del lugar. Juntos deben descubrir una manera de detener esta invasión extraterrestre antes de que sea demasiado tarde, y cuando uno de ellos sugiere que tomar ciertas drogas ilegales podría ayudarlos a detectar a los extraterrestres, se desata el caos. Siempre pensé que era una idea brillante, porque si las drogas pueden alterar nuestra percepción, entonces la premisa de que los adultos son extraterrestres disfrazados puede ser una fantasía paranoica. The Faculty lo tiene todo: estupendas actuaciones, ingeniosas referencias a novelas clásicas de ciencia ficción y escenas llenas de suspenso.

Jóvenes talentos - Galería John Harriman / Británico

Lost in Translation (2003)
Directed by Sofia Coppola

The first minutes of Sofia Coppola’s best film to date are quite revealing: A woman, Scarlett Johansson, is in a five star hotel, beholding Tokyo’s skyline. A man, Bill Murray, looks through a car’s window, curious perhaps, but above all estranged. Combining a deeply poignant music with suggestive images, the director creates a world, a filmic universe that captures our attention immediately. What Sofia Coppola does in the opening frames is what many filmmakers struggle to achieve in their entire careers.

Throughout the film there is always a certain feeling of longing, of loneliness; longing for a different tomorrow, and loneliness as the confirmation that the one constant in human condition is discontent. Many critics must have explored the lack of communication as a fundamental key in “Lost in Translation”, both as the obvious reference of the title and also as an indicator of all that we can’t put into language.

Perhaps in the best role of his career, Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a washed-out actor that used to be a super star and now has to endorse a Japanese whisky to make a couple of million bucks. He feels like an alien in Tokyo. But he’s also a specular image of the Japanese people’s own alienated condition. Westernized to the extreme, the Japanese have lost their essence, they are the living example of how further can people go in order to disallow themselves.

Giovanni Ribisi’s character, a professional photographer also ponders on it: Japanese rock and roll groups that have no substance and exist only thanks to the decoration, the false reality that photography and the right publicity stunt can imprint on them. The photographer is there to sustain the alienation process, even if he disagrees with the falseness of it all.

In the same way, Bob Harris has to synthetize in a TV commercial what the Japanese consider the core of Western elegance and sophistication. He is asked to be Roger Moore, Frank Sinatra, he is asked to perform not as the white man he is but as the white man they need him to be. Of course, there can be no words or guidelines for such a taxing acting job. And that’s why also it’s impossible for the interpreters to translate the instructions given to him. Not only are words lost in translation, but also there is an unnamed need, a ‘real’ that threatens to irrupt into reality, and as Lacan explains in his psychoanalytic theory, the real exceeds the language, the real can never exist within the boundaries of the symbolic, id est, language.

Bob Harris is an exhausted man that finds alcohol soothing, although just barely. After 25 years of marriage he is unhappy. Between him and his wife no real communication exists. What takes place, however, is a very insistent simulacrum, much in the same way that everything takes place in Japan. Philosopher Alan Badiou’s talks about the importance of the simulacrum in postmodern society; if Sofia Coppola’s film is more revealing and enthralling than anything else out there is precisely because it embraces contemporaneity to the maximum; this isn’t a film about explanations, about outcomes, which would be a modernist approach; this is a postmodern film in the way that it sates our hunger for art, for beauty and for intellectual value while establishing what Derrida proposed in his deconstruction theory: knowledge can never be complete. When Bob’s wife sends him a fax, or Fed-Exes carpet samples, or calls him, it’s all a simulacrum. They are never able to connect with each other, not even at the most basic of levels.

my page / mi página

In the same manner, Charlotte, extraordinarily interpreted by Scarlett Johansson seems to be drifting away. She’s married to a successful photographer but she can’t figure out what to do with her time. There is no meaning for life, and that thought depresses her and fills her heart with anguish. She tries to get into self-help audiobooks to feel better, to no avail. The entire boom of auto-help material is also an example of Badiou’s simulacrum; thousands if not millions of these books are written each year, and yet they are all useless. Life cannot be summarized, standardized and explained so that you can feel better. But despair takes the best of us all, and thus self-help becomes the one and only thing that sells out nowadays.

When Charlotte and Bob meet in the hotel’s bar, they recognize in the other the same existential doubts, the same sensibilities, and they feel connected. They are the only characters able to actually communicate with each other. Their bond is intensified when contrasted with the world around them, for example, with Charlotte’s Japanese friends who are so absolutely alienated and have tried so hard to look and act like Americans that end up as ridiculous and pathetic creatures. Tokyo is a city that denies its past, its traditions, so much that it’s simply brutal to see how its inhabitants behave.

However, there is still some true beauty left (beauty as it would be understood in the Genji Monogatari and other traditional Japanese works of art), and Coppola gives us a glimpse of it, in a couple of moments. Nevertheless, this beauty, this true spirit, is constantly covered by the appalling reality that surrounds the protagonists. When Bob Harris receives the visit of a woman wearing sexy stockings, we are privy to yet another example of westernized acculturation and fantasies, although here the fantasy instead of covering the horror of the real merely exacerbates the void, the structural fissures of Japan’s society.

Sofia Coppola’s masterwork resonates deeply inside of us because it’s one of the most refined and superb portrayals of the human condition in cinema’s history. The final scene, of course, proves once again that there is no such thing as a happy ending, and precisely because of that it reminds us that life is just like that, unpredictable, full of suffering but also possibilities of change and, of course, free will. Lost in Translation makes it into my personal top twenty without a second thought. 
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Hace más de una década que no visito Cusco y mis últimos viajes han sido o bien a Estados Unidos o bien a países vecinos como Colombia, la tierra de mi padre. Así es que considero una falta grave, de mi parte, estar desconectado de lo que sucede fuera de Lima. Más aún en términos artísticos.

Por suerte, aunque sea levemente, algo de esto se puede subsanar gracias a la admirable labor de la curadora Élida Román, quien se ha esforzado en descentralizar el arte. Así, con el apoyo de la galería John Harriman del Británico, ella ha logrado organizar una muestra anual enfocada en artistas de provincias, en este caso, de Cusco.

La muestra “Jóvenes talentos” reúne las originales y sugerentes esculturas en piedra y metal de Edwin Huamán y los fantásticos cuadros del artista plástico Richard Peralta. Acostumbrado al arte contemporáneo limeño, debo admitir que quedé gratamente sorprendido por el altísimo nivel de calidad de los trabajos seleccionados para esta muestra. Tantos las esculturas como los cuadros me transmitieron una fuerza y una energía que a veces no se percibe en obras de artistas locales. La muestra quedará abierta al público en la galería John Harriman (Jr. Bellavista 531 / Malecón Balta 740. Miraflores) desde el día de mañana hasta el 31 de marzo. Vayan a verla, realmente vale la pena.

Me enteré de la muestra gracias a mis amigos Andreé Ferro y Natalia Higa, justamente hace un par de semanas, los tres nos reunimos en el café Gianfranco y conversamos con Élida Román mientras comíamos helados artesanales. Conozco más artistas que curadores, pero considero sumamente valiosa la opinión de una conocedora del arte que está en constante búsqueda de nuevos talentos. Gracias a ese afán, Élida ha descubierto para nosotros la obra de dos cusqueños con propuestas artísticas de primer nivel.

Además de conversar con Andreé y Natalia durante la inauguración, también me encontré con varias amistades como Mariloli de Koechlin y artistas como Joseph de Utia. Lo cierto es que, tras conversar brevemente con ellos (y tomarme un par de vasos de whisky y algunas copas de vino tinto y blanco, dicho sea de paso), todos estuvieron de acuerdo en una cosa: la originalidad y lucimiento de los trabajos expuestos.

Por esas casualidades de la vida, la primera vez que un escritor me firmó un libro Andreé estaba presente, y eso me ha hecho pensar en la gran cantidad de libros autografiados que tengo actualmente, entre ellos “La piedra alada” del genial poeta José Watanabe. Ahí van la foto del libro y del autógrafo. Y también he decidido incluir una de mis páginas completas para un próximo cómic (así como el gran dibujante Keith Giffen se inspiró en el genial artista francés Druillet a principios de los 80, yo también intenté plasmar, sobre todo en la primera viñeta, el estilo y la composición del ilustrador galo).