PUNTO Y RAYA ('A Dot and a Line') is a touching little film from Venezuela, a movie with low budget and high aspirations that manages to explore friendship and bonding between two warring factions in a most sensitive way. Director Elia Schneider and writer Henry Herrera deserve their 2005 Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Film, Venezuela and we can hope this talented team partners for other outings. Shot with a digital camera that bleeds the color to almost black and white, the production values may at first put off the audiences used to either classy black and white movies or richly colored ones, but this slight flaw should not deter the enthusiastic craftsmanship on the part of everyone involved in making this terrific little film.
The film opens and closes with battle scenes, setting the tension that exists along the river that divides Venezuela from Colombia, two countries who not only have the innate political differences but also are involved in the internationally significant war on drugs - primarily cocaine and its many derivatives. Cheito (Roque Valero) is a young small time but smart and wily drug dealer from Caracas who is captured by the police and 'sentenced' to the Venezuelan army to patrol the border of Colombia. He has a beautiful sister Yosmar (Daniela Alvarado) whom he protects like a watchdog. Simultaneously a serious, naive, conservative young Colombian named Pedro (the hunky and very fine Edgar Ramirez), 'saving himself' for his beloved girlfriend Lutecia (Daniela Bascope), volunteers for the Colombian army to combat drugs and fight the guerrillas responsible for the drug trafficking along the border.
Through a continuing series of circumstances Cheito and Pedro are thrown together and it is Cheito's cunning and 'smarts' that keep the two men surviving - though at most time they are personally at odds. Their involvement in the drug cartels they engage and the varying sides of the two armies they dodge result in some hilarious comic bits. In their quieter moments the illiterate Pedro asks Cheito to read his letters from his Lutecia and write return correspondence - a chance for Cheito to voice his warped libidinous nature unknown to the naive Pedro. The two young men bond, survive dangerous situations, and eventually find some quirky changes in their plans for the future. The ending of the film is both sad and tender: by the time the story is over we have taken the two misfit buddies into our hearts.
Both Roque Valero and Edgar Ramirez are strong actors and manage to make credible this complex relationship that vacillates between enemy and comrade. They create a chemistry on screen that makes the movie work very well indeed. Not only is the story an entertaining one, it also gives an insight to the magnitude of the drug problems that cruelly determine lifestyles in South America. While it never preaches, it delivers strong messages for outsiders to consider. And in the end it is a very fine little film that deserves audience wide attention. Grady Harp
