Time is out of kilter in Santiago Mohar Volkow’s outrageous satirical comedy, A History of Love and War.
Re-framing an infamous sliver of 19th century history, the film combines the aesthetics of that time with elements of modernity to create a surreal vision of Mexico befitting the similarly bizarre story that is going to take place in it. Inspired by the ill-fated monarchy and subsequent execution of Maximilian I of Mexico, it presents him as a real estate baron who comes a cropper when his development of a gaudy monstrosity of an outlet mall prompts reprisals from local guerillas. Originally screening back at Rotterdam earlier in the year, Volkow’s new film is now part of the line-up at this year’s Oldenburg Film Festival.
Discussion around the film — a deadpan farce of the most absurd kind — has mentioned its kinship with the style of filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Aki Kaurismaki and, while all of these are apt — particularly given the mannered mode of the drama -– such comparisons don’t quite convey the outright chaos of Volkow’s vision. This a world of macabre slapstick, where dismembered limbs spray ketchup-red gore over onlookers, where local politicians are subjected to orgiastic bribes, where men can bargain their way back to the world of the living with talking dogs, and where stag parties in Acapulco end up in glorious bloodbaths.
The plot follows the travails of Pepe Sanchez Campo (Andrew Leland Rogers), a piggish property magnate, and his beloved, Constanza (Lucia Gomez-Robledo). Pepe has plans to build a gigantic mall and casino complex called “Mictlan” – named, perhaps appropriately, for the Aztec underworld – but runs into trouble when a local militia, called the Revolutionary Nomad Commune, resist his encroachment onto the land. As Pepe’s conflict with these people escalates, so too does the ire of Teo (Dario Yazbek Bernal), Constanza’s cousin and paramour who is jealous of the couple’s forthcoming nuptials and plans sabotage. As various characters are humiliated, maimed, and die in increasingly grotesque and hilarious ways, Pepe and Constanza try to find ways to endure.
Colonialist expansion is clearly in the crosshairs of Volkow’s unrelenting screenplay, with the short-lived and failed kinship of Maximilian a famous rejection of monarchy in Mexico with the immediate restoration of the republic after his death in 1867. Here it is combined wholesale with corporate greed and corruption to expand its scope, presenting the ridiculousness of Pepe’s ability to get his own way with money and influence while the only people able to genuinely stop him are those standing up for a free Mexico. The wild timelessness of the visuals also brings the story into the modern day with every scene combining the aesthetics of the 19th century with the contemporary. Pepe and Constanza are dresses in what initially seem like formal dress of the period, but with modernisations; Constanza’s dress is at one point revealed to be a jumpsuit, there is a recurring NSYNC ringtone, Pepe travels around in. stretch limousine. The garish trappings of today only serve to heighten the sense of ostentation.
This is also aided by the aforementioned stiffness and theatricality of the performance styles, and Volkow and his cinematographer Adrian Cores also adopt some compositional elements of Wes Anderson’s style to heighten the silliness. The film looks nothing like as twee as something by Anderson, but the central framing and stillness of the American filmmaker’s set-ups are evoked here.
While A History of Love and War feels fairly off the wall from its opening moments – a video pitch for funding from Pepe in which he dresses in a builder’s outfit and flies around a horrible 3D visualisation of Mictlan – but it is during its second half that the strangeness verges into the unhinged, and it is an absolute riot. In continually increasing the daftness of what is happening, the humour never jumps the shark and remains bitingly, laugh out loud funny throughout.
Director, screenplay: Santiago Mohar Volkow
Cast: Lucia Gomez-Robledo, Andrew Leland Rogers, Sophie Gomez, Aldo Escalante Ochoa, Dario Yazbek Bernal
Producer: Jonathan Davis, Santiago de la Paz, Santiago Mohar Volkow, Juan Sarquis, Santiago Dosal Stieglitz
Cinematography: Adrian Cores
Editing: Didac Palou
Music: Diago Lozano
Sound: Javier Umpierrez
Art direction: Lucia Diez Marina
Costume design: Luba Ramirez
Production company: Laredo 17, Nomadas, Edge Films (Mexico)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival
In Spanish
111 minutes
