AFI Fest 2022 - FilmRoot

Before, Now & Then – AFI Fest 2022

In Before, Now & Then, Nana finds security in a second marriage to a wealthy old man, having lost her family to the war in West Java. However, she cannot escape the dreams and trauma of her past, or the expectations of her new family and becomes a ghostly figure until she meets one of her husband’s mistresses. Together they can escape and find their own freedom.

Stylistically, Before, Now & Then feels heavily influenced by Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. Whilst the colors are more muted, the dreamy pacing and slowed down scenes between Nana and her second husband feel just like the slow romantic scenes between the two protagonists in In the Mood for Love. These scenes in both films are designed to convey uncertainty. In In the Mood for Love the uncertainty is romantic – we don’t know if the two characters will keep seeing each other. In Before, Now & Then, the uncertainty is melancholic. Similarly, we don’t know if the two characters will be together for much longer, however given that the two characters have been together for a while, it feels as if their relationship is dying instead of burning brightly.

The uncertainty of Nana’s relationship is symbolic of the state of the country. Just like the current Indonesian regime, she knows what she’s getting from her stable marriage to an older husband. Whilst it has confined her mostly to the house – and the back of the house at that, as she rarely shows her face publicly – she knows that she will be taken care of. However, there is no love in their relationship. The new freedom she gains with her husband’s mistress, in contrast, is exciting. It fills her with hope that things could be different and more free.

Whilst we have the hindsight to know that the political change happening in the background of Before, Now & Then wasn’t a positive one, the film captures the uncertainty of the times well with it’s dreaminess.

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Alcarras – AFI Fest 2022

The Sole family have farmed fields in the small municipality of Alcarras in Catalonia for generations. However, the wealthy landowner that owns the property has found more profitable ways to use his land, which doesn’t involve farming or what the Sole family wants. He’s looking to destroy the orchards that provide the Sole family’s livelihood to install more profitable solar panels.

What Alcarras does brilliantly is tell a very specific local story in order to highlight how capitalism is affecting not just the Sole family, but the local community and many other people around the globe. It’s set completely in one small municipality in Spain centered one family, all played by non-actors from similar backgrounds to the family on screen, living on one farm. Through the film’s run-time, we get to intimately know each member of the Sole family to understand their life on the farm as well as how they are each affected by the threatening eviction. We see why they love the freedom and independence of farming their own land as well as how they’re pulled apart by an uncertain future. Whilst a multi-family or multi-country film might fail to generate sympathy for it’s characters because of it’s broad scope, Alcarras, in spending time with one family in one region, gives the audience more time and closeness to sympathize with not just them, but everyone affected by capitalism around the world.

The hidden message in Alcarras is that the Sole family’s experience is not isolated to Alcarras, nor Spain. The few short scenes showing the community’s labor strikes, which Quimet and his son join, show that the Sole family’s experiences are not isolated. The priority of progress and profit over personal and community happiness is destroying families across the world.

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Trenque Lauquen – AFI Fest 2022

If you’re ready to sit down for a few hours to indulge yourself in some cosy, trivial Argentine mysteries, meet the latest film from El Pampero Cine, Trenque Lauquen.

Trenque Lauquen comes from Laura Citarella, one of the members of El Pampero Cine, a group of filmmakers which also includes Mariano Llinas (La Flor, Extraordinary Stories), Agustin Mendilaharzu, and Alejo Moguilansky. Each of the members of the collective usually pop up in the credits of each other films under different roles, making each of the collective’s films feel like a team effort. They each also use the same actors, so if you’ve seen another of their films before, you’re likely to see a familiar face in this one.

Trenque Lauquen, like it’s El Pampero Cine predecessors, isn’t a light commitment. It’s just over 4 hours long, split roughly equally into two sections which are both tied together by Laura’s character. The entire film takes place in Trenque Lauquen, a city on the far west border of Buenos Aires province near La Pampa. It looks like a pretty unremarkable city, with nothing to really distinguish it from anywhere else in Argentina. However the blandness is all part of the film’s construct. As with the majority of films from the El Pampero Cine collective, Trenque Lauquen uses the mundane as a foundation for it’s engrossing mysteries.

Put best by Magu Fernandez Richeri for La Lista:

El Pampero’s films are, at their core, fairly simple. There aren’t any extraordinary premises, but they also work as tiny odysseys. Characters embark on fantastical adventures where the mundane is re-signified as something strange, new, and magical. The strangeness with which Pampero approaches the world is inherently transformational. Any and all minutiae represents a good excuse for them to tell a story as if we as the audience were kids listening in rapt attention, trying to keep us from seeing the world in its drab normality, allowing us to perceive things differently and hatch crazy schemes.

Trenque Lauquen, like La Flor and Extraordinary Stories, feels like indulgent storytelling. It’s as if the filmmakers of El Pampero Cine have been challenging each other to come up with new quirky mysteries to keep audiences interested for longer periods of time. They haven’t seemed to hit their limits yet as each of their last few films have kept audiences interested just to see where the mysteries lead us. Each of their films is like following a maze or river cruise full of pleasant surprises. Plus the pacing and characters are conducive to our immersion in the mystery; they’re both always patient and never rushed. They create the relaxed environment to let the mystery lead us along. Serious things happen in these films, but because of the tone, it never feels real-world serious. This is why these films are indulgent storytelling – they’re there to simply entertain and nothing more, and they do this better than anyone else in the industry.

Head to our AFI Fest 2022 Hub for more reviews from AFI Fest 2022.