Back To Stay (繭愛)

Chekhov once wrote of playwriting: " This is a prescription for utter naturalism; and, if followed exactly, it would yield only tedium".

If "Sleepless Night"  is too loud, too fast and furious for one's sanity, then my next HKIFF film may well be its antithesis: it's too monotonous, too slow and too uneventful. Nonetheless, that didn't stop it from walking away with prizes at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011: the Golden Leopard for the best film and best actress (Maria Canale) and also the international critic's award. 

The film Abri Puertas y Ventanas ( Back To Stay) written and directed by Argentina born but Swiss-raised MiIagros Mumenthale, probably best exemplifies what Anton Chekhov said about his own plays in which nothing much happens: "in which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about the weather, and play cards. Life must be exactly as it is, and people as they are--not on stilts." But it really takes a great deal of skill to attain Chekhovs apparently simple ideal: " Let everything on the stage be just as complicated, and at the same time just as simple as it is in life." . That's a tall order. It requires consummate skill about what kind of trivial episodes the director chooses to present on the screen: whether there is any inherent "drama" embedded in the mundane details of daily living and whether at appropriate junctures, a little inconspicuous emphasis is introduced to enhance the little "dramas" behind the apparently "non-dramatic" materials. Chekhov's was against putting life "on stilts". I don't think he would have any serious objection to putting life, especially, the lives of young ladies, on "stiletto" , so to speak., just for enhanced effects. Otherwise, it would be naturalistic life, not art.

The film is about the petty squabbles, jealousies, dislikes and emotional conflicts between three orphan sisters Marina (María Canale) the oldest, Sofia (Martina Juncadella) and Violeta Tauss (Ailín Salas) in an old house long after the death of their grandma, Alicia (nothing about who or how their parents are or how they came to be living in that house). There is no authority figure in the house: no elderly fatherly or matriarchical figure nor even any man. They drift, each according to their own very different character, bitching each other but also secretly relying upon each other.  It would probably take a shock to let them wake up from their reverence against touching anything in their old house, their grandmother's possession, including outdated record player, tape recorder, old style black and white TV and a whole garage of her stuffs.etc.  This came in the form of a sudden decision by Violetta to leave their house with her boy friend whom she had been secretly dating and the assistance of a young male neighbor Francisco (Julián Tello) who helped them cut down a dying vine and move their furniture about and with whom Marina fell in love.

The title Abri Puertas y Ventanas, literally means "open the doors and windows". This is exactly what happened, when Marina got so angry that without telling her, the youngest sold part of her grandma's stuffs and bought herself a new cell-phone which Marina destroyed with her hammer after which she threw it out the window and in the process broke its window pane. Whenever there are quarrels, the girls will lock themselves inside their own rooms! The film ends by the two remaining sisters listening to the tape of a new song written, sung and accompanied on the guitar by their departed sister Violetta in which she says she still remembers them.

There're certainly lots and lots of trivial details in their lives but I don't think it would help to place a little more emphasis on certain of the scenes by a bit of music or the use of camera movement. As it is, the shots are mostly static. Taking into account that the whole film is centred on their house, it could be very tedious at times. At certain points, I felt I needed a siesta, the way one of them was dangling in a hammock in their garden. I suppose that the competition at Locarno last year could not have been very great. But I must give credit to Maria Canale, who conveys well the kind the nervous but impotent rage she feels at the antics of her sisters. A good study of human dynamics in an enclosed environment.