Four Different Geographical Places, but the Same Cultural Way
The 69th edition of the Seminci offered a varied and worthy official section, composed of 22 films. Excellent for us jurors, and appreciated – and applauded – also by the spectators, who crowded every screening. Two favorable aspects that confirm the importance that the Semana Internacional de Cine da Valladolid has conquered during these seven decades, and that should be the basis of every festival, big, medium, or small. Also worth highlighting is the quality of the other collateral sections, including a fruitful focus on German cinema and the retrospective dedicated to the independent American director Nathan Silver.
In the films proposed in the official section, different in nationality, genre and style, it is possible to find in some of them a common theme. Or rather, a setting: the country. A geographical place that has always suffered from marginality compared to the acclaimed center, in which the economic, social and bureaucratic command resides. The works that have best shown this community and even cultural marginality were Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie, Three Kilometres to the End of the World by Emanuel Pârvu, Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, and Black Dog by Gou Hu.
Four works that photograph and in particular operate an “X-ray” of the setting and the inhabitants. They are places geographically distant from each other, but united by a narrow-minded, violent and orthodox mentality. And all with a narrative approach that does not exclude the ironic jab at the limited habits and customs of these small provincial microcosms. Misericordia, which won the Espiga de oro for best short film and the Delibes Award for best screenplay, is a quiet and sharp description of the rural French country. The return of the young Jérémie to the village allows us to delve into this village of a few people, where everyone knows each other. And they have prejudices. A thriller (a crime, but without punishment) with some veins of comedy, as some scenes in the final part attest (the good-natured and “hedonistic” priest or the “easy-going” police). Narrative elements, enclosed in a sober staging, which recall the descriptive and merciless touch of Claude Chabrol, who often pilloried the bourgeoisie and the French countries.
Along the same lines, Three Kilometres to the End of the World (Trei kilometri până la capătul lumi), which won the Espiga Arcoiris Award. In this case the setting is in the peasant Romanian country, in a village far from Bucharest, the economic and above all bureaucratic center of the nation. A town where, in this case too, the few people know each other and although there is not always love lost between them, they try to maintain a peaceful coexistence. A hypocritical attitude also endorsed by the indolent police chief, who does not want trouble. The narrow-mindedness that permeates the town is highlighted with the discovery that the young Adi is homosexual. A disgrace for the family that would see itself mocked by the entire surrounding village. From this revelation, resulting from the police investigation, unfolds the dramatic and pungent description of the mentality that still grips much of Romania today. A deeply religious country, which relies on the obsolete and violent advice of a caricatured priest, and is prone to corruption, as attested by the behavior of the police chief who does not want chaos in his county.
Different Vermiglio, which had won the Silver Lion at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. Not a snapshot of a contemporary reality, but a “postcard” set in 1944 in the small mountain village of Vermiglio (Trento). A film that, in telling the life of simple peasant people, collects the elegiac style of Ermanno Olmi, in particular L’albero degli zoccoli (1978). Even in this past – Italian – reality, linked to a patriarchal culture (the severe father who at the same time is also the teacher of the improvised school), religious belief dominates, and the director and screenwriter Delpero punctuates this austere story with irony, in particular in those scenes on the sin of the flesh that mourn the teenager Ada.
Finally Black Dog, which won the Ribera de Duero Award for best director and the award for best photography. A visually powerful work, it also casts a merciless gaze towards the past. Set in a city located in the Gobi desert, it is a lost, anonymous place, far from the central and immense Beijing, anxious and polished for the imminent sumptuous and expensive Olympics. A town, where the solitary Lang sadly returns, which has the features of a post-apocalyptic urban plan. Huge abandoned and semi-destroyed buildings, while the few people who are there also seem to be breathing their last. And those few who still have strength, are brutalized by rage. An immense crumbling village, infested with rabid stray dogs, which will be razed to the ground to make way for some new cybernetic town. Historical memory disappears to make room for a vacuous present, an urban extension of all those megalopolises now slaves to themselves, and in which people do not recognize themselves and are standardized.
Roberto Baldassarre
Edited by Savina Petkova
© FIPRESCI 2024