A lean psychological thriller crackling with class, race and generational conflict, Immersion makes a big statement with slender means. Mostly unfolding on board a small family boat on a starkly beautiful Chilean lake, the dramatic set-up recalls backwoods predator classics such as Deliverance (1972) and maritime stranger-danger yarns like Dead Calm (1989), though Roman Polanski’s feted debut Knife in the Water (1962) is probably a more direct cinematic ancestor with its nerve-jangling tension and morally ambivalent tone. Director Nicolás Postiglione’s impressive first feature had its international premiere last week at Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, picking up a Jury Prize. In formal terms, this superior art-house genre exercise was one of the festival program’s most overtly commercial contenders, with strong English-language remake potential.
Prolific Chilean screen veteran Alfredro Castro stars as Ricardo, a divorced father on a rare boating holiday with his two grown-up daughters, Teresita (Consuelo Carreño) and Claudia (Mariela Mignot). Postiglione sets up a steady background hum of low-level antagonism early as the starchy, socially conservative, prudish Ricardo orders his sunbathing daughters to cover their bare flesh. But deeper tensions hang in the air too, just outside the frame. The trio are cruising a lake in the disputed Araucanía region, scene of a bitter struggle for land rights and self-determination by the indigenous Mapuche people. Though this conflict dates back centuries, it has escalated sharply over the last three decades. Indeed, in October this year the Chilean government declared a state of emergency in the region.
Postiglione positions Ricardo as an arrogant, pompous, borderline racist with a deep-seated fear of the Other. “The Mapuche have ruined this place,” he grumbles, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that they owned this homeland long before Spanish colonisers arrived. His anxieties become concrete when he spots a group of indigenous fishermen shouting for help, their boat half sunk. Fearing some kind of ambush, he swiftly starts the engine and speeds away, leaving the strangers flailing in the water, much to the outrage of his daughters.
Recriminations linger even after the young women come ashore to explore their uncle’s rarely used holiday home, a crumbling lakeside villa which shows ominous signs of recent human habitation. When Ricardo mocks Claudia and Teresita for “doing charity from privilege,” they respond with piercing accusations of cowardice. His pride bruised, Ricardo grudgingly agrees to return to the sinking boat, rescuing two young Mapuche men Conrrado (Alex Quevedo) and Walter (Michael Silva). In the tortuous search for their missing friend that follows, suspicions between the two groups continue to build until a tragic confrontation becomes inevitable.
Best known to international audiences for his acclaimed run of collaborations with director Pablo Larrain (Tony Manero, No, The Club), Castro brings poise and gravitas to Immersion. Once again sharing strong screen chemistry with Carreño following their previous pairing in Jorge Riquelme Serrano’s superb slow-burn thriller Some Beasts (2019), his finely modulated performance here makes Ricardo both deeply unlikable and wholly plausible as an overprotective, secretly terrified bourgeois patriarch. Crucially, Postglione is smart enough to keep audience sympathies in flux: even if Ricardo’s racially charged paranoia seems excessive, Conrrado and Walter are also presented as shifty, evasive and possibly dangerous.
Despite being shot in just 16 days on a modest budget, Immersion succeeds as both gripping suspense yarn and glossy technical package. Peppered with lyrical lakeshore motifs, Sergio Armstrong’s crisp cinematography finds creative ways to open up the claustrophobic setting while Paulo Gallo’s score is a potent exercise in slithering, droning, subliminal dread. The plot treads water a little in its latter stages, and occasionally sails a little too close to genre convention: the appearance of a spear gun in an early scene is a pretty clear affirmation of the “Chekhov’s rifle” rule that every stage prop will eventually play a key dramatic function. But Postiglione mostly avoids obvious signposting and overcooked melodrama, prodding away at ugly human flaws without taking the comforting, reductive route of clearly defined villains and victims. Fishing for answers in a muddy lake of social and racial injustice, Immersion does not let anybody off the hook, including the viewer.
Director: Nicolás Postiglione
Screenwriters: Agustin Toscano, Moisés Sepulveda, Nicolás Postiglione
Cast: Alfredo Castro, Consuelo Carreño, Michael Silva, Mariela Mignot, Alex Quevedo
Producers: Moisés Sepulveda, Francisco Hervé, Isabel Orellana Guarello, Nicolás San Martín, Alejandro Wise, Juan Bernardo González, Arturo Pereyra
Cinematography: Sergio Armstrong
Editing: Valeria Hernández, Nicolás Postiglione
Music: Paulo Gallo
Production companies: Araucaria Cine (Chile), Juntos (Chile), Primatelab Producciones (Chile), Whisky Films (Mexico)
World sales: Latido
Venue: Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn (First Feature compitition)
In Spanish
82 minutes
