The danger: extravagant praise, sinking the very film you like, by creating excessive expectations. The fact: expect all you want of Alicia Scherson's "Play" - you will not be disappointed.
This brilliant film from Chile - to be shown at the SF International Film Festival, April 23, 26, 28 and May 3 - is bulletproof. As it follows the potentially/actually interlinking lives of ordinary but wonderfully interesting people in Santiago, you watch with amazement how a film can be so *right* in every way. If you don't get drawn into it, if you don't relish its quirky (and yet totally real) characters, if you are not amazed by Ricardo de Angelis' cinematography, the problem is with you, not with the film.
De Angelis (of many films, including "El buen destino," "Sueños atómicos," and "Pedile a San Antonio") is a genius, plain and simple. Seemingly each single frame is fascinating, meaningful, curious - and yet not one of them impedes the relentless (if effortless-looking) forward movement of "Play." Great cinematographers are often guilty of self-importance and self-indulgence; not de Angelis - he is serving the film. A genius.
The director, at 32, is half of de Angelis' age, and her track record of only two other films ("Baño de mujeres" and "Crying Underwater") is a fraction of the cinematographer's. It doesn't matter. She has the eye, the mind, the heart, both the caring and the discipline to create a thoroughly splendid work. The Santiago-born biologist went to film school in Cuba, came the US on a Fulbright, recently moved back to Chile.
Here comes the part I hate: what is the film "about"? Ugh. Good films are like good people - not "about" something, but good existentially, in themselves, just the way they are. Still, one cannot escape the linear, obvious responsibility of narration. And that's exactly where Scherson is so good: she deals with the "about," the story, the nuts-and-bolts, but she does it in an always-interesting, attractive, sophisticated way, but never fancy, never artsy.
"Play" follows (very closely, but not intrusively, in de Angelis' photography) two people: a young mapuche woman from central Chile, living in the capital as a caretaker servant for an elderly man, and Tristan, a heartbroken - or just plain broken - young man, rejected, lonely, helpless.
NO: They do not fall into each other's arms. NO: they do not walk off into the sunset. NO: they don't end up as tragedians in Tristan-und-Isolde fashion. Scherson doesn't write formula, she speaks of life, real life, which is manifested - almost always, except for moments of illumination and peak experience - between the unformed and the unformulated. Her actors are magnificent: Vivana Herrera and Andrés Ulloa are just as real and believable as the characters they play, and they are surrounded by a large cast of professional actors and passersby - I wonder if you can distinguish between them. (Exception: the hero's wildly sensual blind mother and her obnoxious magician lover are obviously well-trained, professional actors.)
Scherson's style is a seamless combination of realism, flashbacks that illuminate, "little things" which gain in significance both on the screen and within the viewer, shifting perspectives, and straightforward story-telling. NO: none of this is obvious or distracting. While you watch "Play," you see only the story, the characters therein. Complexity and sophistication come to the fore only when reflecting on what it was that "got you."
The idea for "Play" came to Scherson in Chicago, where "being a foreigner gave me new insight into the way we define ourselves as inhabitants of a specific place. The more the world connects through the global economy and technology, the more this definition and this awareness of identity becomes diffuse and complex. How do people deal with coming from a strong ancient culture but living a life that has nothing to do with it?
"Is a native mapuche girl that lives in the city supposed to feel more identified with her grandmother from the rainy south than with her favorite heroine of Japanese video games? Cities are like game boards where rules are to be discovered and change from neighborhood to neighborhood. Urban players have to find the right role to be able to get up every morning and be apart of the game during the whole day."
While this is illuminating, it could also be slightly off-putting. Glory be, when you see "Play," there is no agenda or subtext anywhere on the horizon, "just" one terrific movie. Hie and get to the nearest theater where "Play" unspools.
